Hard Frost

Hard Frost 1
Late in October, and leaves have been falling for weeks.
My dog and I are walking by the river, by a backwater
wearing a new skin of ice, with white vapor seeping from the wounds.
As the sun creeps over the ridge, its rays hit the tops
of elms and beech trees, and it is like a chain reaction,
the warmth causes leaf after leaf to loosen and fall.
I imagine what it is like in the leaf to be so cold all night
and all the softness of the sugar factory is killed,
so the sun is like a raygun that blasts you from your perch,
and you fall, all at once, as the sun finds more and more of you,
falling all at once like wax soldiers in a failed offensive,
falling like soap flakes in an old-time flicker from the Yukon.
And they lay in a heap on the green moist ground
like panting dogs
who have been out among trees, chasing all day, and can only
grin now like the agitated dead.
Because the trees are closing shop for the season,
they are going away from the green and away from the birds,
the trees are departing for a different place.
They are not dead,
they are only gone, and these branches they leave
as remembrances.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• autumn
• winter
• trees
• colors
• leaves
• photosynthesis
• cell
• membrane
• xylem
• phloem
• cambium
• freeze
• frozen