Clinging leaves

Embers of summer’s flame

Touching air and sky and branch

Leaves turn their final hue

Clinging effortlessly to their past

To await the fall of the new

Others have long since slipped into abyss 

Of cold unflinching turf below

Looking 

Up 

To see the tree, 

Around 

To sense the roots,

The leaves rejected by their kin 

See anew the land they had always seen, 

Yet never felt before

And on that day

The stillness, the peace

The silence

Is shocking.

A life spent bending 

Riding with the wind in the soaking sun and rains is gone. 

In a slow, tumbling and twisting ride

That changed into a welcome, soft and gentle glide

As the land reached up to pluck me from an uncertain fall

Untethered and unbeaten

Crisp in the chill morning

I wait for what the daylight may bring

Reflection is my all

Feeling warm though helpless

I taste the arrowed light that falls 

On my crackled skin.

It will be a new season before I finally rot

It will be a new autumn for those that follow

Falling as I am fallen to a new beginning

They will soon lie on top of me 

And taste the same journey into the earth

As I 

The tree remains, a trunk both tall, yet bent

Under the history of all leaves born

Forces battled and effort spent

To reach up

To the sky

Away from pasture 

Where I now lie. 

What 

time remains is hiding

What feelings, thoughts and

pain are hidden

What  time

Is left

Is there

For me

To fill

From pastures new.