VIrtuous Circle - Oct 27 2023

 

Virtuous Circle

Oct 27 2023

These trees are stubborn.

Crimson leaves, curling at the edges

still cling

to its sturdy branches

and supple stems;

even now,

with snow on the ground

and a bone-cutting wind

that will not quit.

The leaves dance

a manic tarantella,

straining against their branches

and funnelling downwind,

somehow still attached

and refusing to give in.

It sounds like a brunt of wind-whipped flags,

flapping madly

and pulling hard against their halyards

taut enough to snap

or tear clean off.

An unholy racket

that exhilarates me,

the wind at my back

and grabbing my hat

as it nearly sails away.

In the end, of course, winter always wins,

and inexorably

the trees will be stripped.

So for months they will stand,

jagged skeletons

shivering in the cold,

flayed of their flesh

and bared to the elements.

While the windrow of leaves

piled hard against the fence

will spend it interred

under mountains of snow

from now until spring,

only to reappear

shrivelled

limp

and drained of red.

Unfurling buds

and trees newly greened.

While the old leaves

are returning to the soil,

first as litter

then loam,

where they will slowly decompose

into fertile black earth.

A virtuous circle

closed.