10-20-2013

These October trees
Grasp hopelessly
After their leaves
In fear of inevitable winter,
Its coming absences,
And wild, empty winds
Screaming over plains.

And the winter will come, and
It's absences,
And the trees will crouch
Naked
On the plains, in the wind,
Leafless and stony and old.

And all night, every night,
They will dream
Of pulling their long roots
Out of the earth's crust
And stumbling, fat-footed
In flight, and wander,
And escape.

But somewhere,
Near the thin sapling still suspended
At the center of what the decades
And the wounds and the weathers
Have calloused and encased,

They know that they
Are purposed
To awaken where they were;
Find themselves where they were.