Poetry Friday: Leaf Verse

We are to that time of year that is hard for me to enjoy. We're past the glowing throes of autumn when the world is a blazing whirl of color and crisp days...we've had our first frost and snow and jackets are now mandatory. Now its on to hearth-fires and handicraft marathons, days when we snuggle under blankets and read stacks of storybooks and when we can't so I curse the windshield while I try to unearth it from its layers of ice with that little scratchy tool buried in the trunk of the van.

I want to be so cozy about it, I'm trying to will myself into that space by trying to enjoy even the annual destruction of the foliage.

Late Autumn Theatrical

There is a host of seasonal Post-it notes,

Flittering in our street corner maple-top.

They are pale, wasted ghosts of leaves,

Performing some great arboreal Hamlet,

Thinner than themselves, inscribed “November”

On every shuddering vein and tip.

We are at the climax now, the part where

There is a great stage-death, en masse

One million staggering, fainting falls then

Performing on the chill, even lawn

They twitch at the heels, gag and roll

Crisp into rigor mortis and compost dramatically.

Such an impressive show will doubtless

Inspire an encore and we will have the whole

Thing over again beginning with the bit about the

Hope of sap rising and the miraculous green buds

Whirling open their newborn chartreuse feathers.

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