The world wrote me a poem today.

It spelled it out in leaves.

I’ll try to tell you what it said,

But sometimes words fail me.

“All things change, child.

Someday will bring rebirth.

The newly-minted leaves of spring burst forth—

Escaping winter’s grip.

The ice that seems forever set, cracks,

Creating meltwaters in frozen spirits.

And growing things will make the dried ground a newly-turned earth again.

But today is a different celebration.

Today we bid farewell to a season that refuses to go out.

The November sun yet burns—

a fiery match against unprotected skin—

Warding off winter’s dark heart.”

*

As I walk, I listen. With my heart, I hear.

The world speaks in technicolor and surround-sound splendor.

Maple, Bay, and Beech leaves waver from green to gold to bronze—

laughing, courting the heat curling up from warm grasses.

And though they are crunching nuisances to chase with a rake,

The scraping, dragging, bagging annoyances adults curse,

Also make a playground for children to romp through with rubber-soled glee.

The tree at the corner whispers revelations—it is my informant.

Its leaves with their crinkle-cut, potato chip edges, blacken, yet stubbornly cling to gnarled branches.

It’s crooked trunk in naked winter, points out mistakes in a grey sky with crooked-fingered impatience.

Yes, a bleak season is coming.

But for now, a sinuous black cat laps at a pool in the inky tarmac.

It darts a reproachful look before—poof—it dashes into shadows and is gone.

A current whisks red-brown-yellow paintbrush splashes in vortexes along the sidewalk.

And squirrels have no time to pander for gawking admiration.

The world speaks through wind chimes…

And invisible gusts…

And silence.

 The pathway is now a variegated landscape

Where up is down

And only in snow globes

Can worlds come apart and reform

In such a whirlwind, patchwork topography.

I am dizzy. Overcome by verse parsed in semaphore signals—

Through sunlit trees the Earth speaks.

*

“The fallow season is upon us and yet the roses cling, sharp-thorned objections to change.

Milkweeds tuck their mouse ears up and listen to fall’s farewell.

Pods—open mouthed—spitting seeds.

Silken tufts will find their way to window boxes

Where dead chrysanthemums mourn with heavy heads.

The time for spring will come, child, the time to rise will come.

But, for now, it is time to sleep.”

*

The world wrote me a poem today.

It spelled it out in leaves.

I’ll try to tell you what it said,

But sometimes the world fails me.