Poetry by Tracy Marks

Vermont 1992

copyright 1992 by Tracy Marks


She touched the brilliant leaves so gingerly,
afraid they would die too soon in early fall,
crumble
       into crisp brown at the brush of her hand,
or worse, lie limp
                and unresponding. Foliage
     has its season,
she reassured herself. My colors are as bright,
my colors as as ever-changing.
                                         Death
                        is only a passing autumn
                                  breeze. Then stooping
to the ground she
gathered
together
piles and piles of fallen foliage,
leaves from golden oaks and
crimson maples,
          leaves she could not name, of softer
orange hue, and those few still newly
green, singing
        My colors
are as bright, my colors are as
ever-changing, singing
            when a sudden gust
                            surged through
                  her hill of leaves, her
                                autumn palace,
stole from her lips the cry that
                                      ended her song, the  
                                                        silence
             that ended her cry,
left her shaking, forlorn,
                                          holding
only a single remnant of autumn splendor
only a single leaf,
brown and crisp and
crumbling
             into
                   winter.



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