What Autumn Left? Poem by Hanna Abideen

Autumn leaves are refugees
Like my depressed grandfather
And diabetic grandmother
Who fled to turn fresh green hue
Into painterly tinctures
Without a compass or map
When the autumnal sunshine
Grows shorter and
Fall embraces withered leaves.

Suffocating somewhere,
Where I could not escape from
Dwelling there for many a time
Gazing at the thatched
Roofs of mud hut
My four year Baha
Asked tears in eyes,
What is the color of hunger?
Perhaps darker than black
Or brighter than blue!

When hues left art
Sugar maples, aspen and
Russet leaves in heap
Listening to the tales of
Starving humans and empty pockets
Awaiting companions to fall off
Swore the art to turn into dust!