tree still-life

leaves dangling --
tiny trapped kites
in their trees,
while the wind
has whisked off to play
somewhere else...

© Jon Bohrn (1999)

Aaron Copland rakes leaves at his
home in Ridgefield, Ct., in 1946.
Photo by Victor Kraft

leaves

Last season's leaves, the discards
of trees that hope, maybe,
for something better this year
(or maybe it's just their cleanup routine)
either way, it's all done now; 
So now there is purpose
in the precipitous wielding 
of leaf blowers, impersonal power 
over the rejects, the windswept, 
the huddled in gutters, 
the brittle crunch underfoot
underwheels, undertime, 
their dry chalkboard scratching 
reminds me, (I shudder), of me --
am I so far gone?
And to look at them, 
brown twisted refuse,
I don't think they remember 
the blossoms, the spring winds, 
the joyful bending in breeze,
the face-to-face with a sky, with a God,
childhood either, and I sigh,
this shared worry...