If You Drop Leaves
If you drop leaves when she walks by,
does that signify grief for those
cut down early,
or merely drought?
How easily we abandon and forget.
Yet a whiff of lemon verbena or the light
bouncing from a passing Ford
can call them back,
tiny sorrows ratcheted in sequence
above the cracked well casing
but below the shingles
and near the dwindling shade
tracing its outline on the lawn.
And what do you whisper
alone at night within sight
of sawn and stacked siblings?
Do you suffer anger by way
of deadfall or absorption,
bark grown around and concealing
a penetrating nail, never shedding
tears, never sharing one moment
with another. Offered condolences,
what might you say? Pain earns no
entrance. Remit yourselves.
* * *
“If You Drop Leaves” was published at Bad Pony in November 2017. Many thanks to editor Emily Corwin for taking this piece.
O at the Edges 
I know a tree in Galloway that’s engulfed a whole section of Victorian wrought iron railings. So remorseless, so tree! I liked this poem a lot.
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Thanks, Margaret. I love those stubborn, relentless trees. I had many of them on my rural Texas property.
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Your titled captured my attention and then the opening stanza knocked me out of my olive tree…
“If You Drop Leaves
If you drop leaves when she walks by,
does that signify grief for those
cut down early,”
“Either define the moment or the moment will define you.” – Walt Whitman
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We have one that’s trying to eat our deck right now.
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Gotta love ‘em!
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