Morte Fortuita (Ode to Fall)

A Guest Poem: Of Slumbering Trees, the Rotten Bound to Flame

Oliver Hihn, Unsplash

What is it that drags the day through night,
The restlessness that consumes me?

Is it fear, the dread of what the night brings,
The darkness that contorts reality?

Is it the soul within me that I often fail,
The artisan that bends the bars of his cage?

Is it the glow of the full moon,
Ethereal and distant?

Is it my conscience, holding off to bed
Only then to speak?

Is it my heart, so divided and confused,
Seeking guidance from the brain?

Questions so rhetorical yet so crucial
Are yet to be answered, if ever.

The leaves that burn away in fall alone
Receive answer as they make their exit
Brightening in realization of what is
And what will come.

The dawn of death in this waking world
Thin the curtains that divide temporal
From eternal.
As the old is slain, replaced by the new.

Brother wind rejoins the crisp skies
The dew smiling on the brittle bows
Of slumbering trees.
The rotten bound to flame.

And all is set in motion, swiftly halted.
The beasts are tucked away
Into the warm embrace of earth
A sabbatical before the labors of spring.

The table is set again for the harvest
The frosty oak stripped bare
Of the fruits of man’s labor
And the chipmunk hunkers down too.

Oh, baron of the verglas, snapping off!
Your moniker is fall.
The monotony of the day
Is brought color by your hands.
Your spirit prevails through biting cold
And heat of summer.