Hailstorm - edit3

[dukealien]

I think the poem could gain by throwing in that old fashioned moral of the story like you did in the original. Only, there it was abrupt, coming right at the end. it really ought to be a 3-4 line summary. Without the moralising there's no second level to the poem.
Suggestion below:

And we, when our dreams scatter like a band
of brothers curtailed in their prime, before
russet Autumn shakes their rusty hands,
like trees must cope.

Good critique - that last line is a poser (and it's tempting to just cut it off, incomplete, after "colors").

After a fair number of excursions, I come back to the original end-rhyme and story, but without  injecting that didactic "we."  I think it's fully implied with all the anthropomorphizing in the last four lines, creating the desired summary without recasting the other phrases that seem to work pretty well as they were.

edit2


Just after lunch I took a rake and swept
young, healthy clipped leaves off my summer lawn.
Some clung to twigs and branches, neatly drawn
along as though alive, formations kept.

A sentimental person might have wept
to see such vivid, growing life a pawn
of hail-shot sleeting down before the dawn
in fusillades and volleys while I slept.

But when I’d raked no leaf bag came to hand -
in summertime there’s not a one in store
to shroud those cut-down leaves still green with hope.
So there they lie, untidy fallen band
of brothers shot down with no autumn soar
or death-proud colors.  Sorrowing, trees cope.