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Published: April 26, 2007 02:54 pm
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Of Deciduous Trees
Mairead Small Staid of Claremont, Calif.
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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