Of Deciduous Trees - SalemNews.com, Salem, MA

The trees outside my window here

are evergreens. At home

the oaks and maples and elms would be dressed

for October, and the tourists would be coming

with their scarves and cameras. They take pictures

of the leaves before they fall,

before they die. But the people

are dying as well. We are born of deciduous trees, all,

all of us who take our coats out of boxes

and buy new boots, brown as dirt.

The backyard here smells of bonfires

in the dampness. At home I would walk

through burnished leaves and listen

to their sparking beneath my feet.

Here the ground keeps its emerald cover;

the best the aged leaves can do is a palely

gilded yellow. England does not die each year

with grace, but with bitterness and cold, harboring frost

like resentment. No defiant glow, no unapologetic snow

starting to fall like sugar into the world's wide mouth.

Some say that we begin to die at birth,

but then it must also be said that

in hospital beds, under wreckage, or at home,

alone and sad, we are still being born.

New breath fills our lips, and something within us blossoms and grows

even as we fall. We are always being born,

flaming red and gold even as we die,

bursting into beauty

and rising in smoke.

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