Don’t get me wrong:
I, too, would choose the blood-infused
madness of the maple leaf
that bold red rage
against the dying of the light.
How not to admire those fierce small things
burning themselves up on branches poised to shed them?
How not to swoon
at the beauty of self-immolation?

Or perhaps I’d choose that other way
the wild flinging down of the gauntlet
the supreme surrender of the whole self
In one triumphant gesture of contempt:
There. Take it all.

After that strong night wind and first frost
out we walked to find
the leaf-heavy trees of yesterday
bone-bare.
We paced three inches deep
in the silent body of autumn.
It had left nothing for winter to do
all signs of vibrant life
wiped out.

No clinging.
No being picked and plucked and whittled down
in ignominious increments.
No final pleas for mercy.
Inevitability transformed into choice
destruction self-designed.
(The sweet seduction of suicide)

But then there’s yet another path.
Nature, not stingy with choices,
leaves behind a gorgeous vacuum
a precious penumbra of what has passed.
After sucking fevered color out
She leaves on the Chinese Pistache beyond my window
a pale tender yellow
dim and delicate like the palest eye of sun
a fragility of color
that calls up a pang of tenderness for that tortured trio:
What was, what is, what’s yet to be.
She lets us love again what is lost,
find again in what marks its missing
what we miss. Who we miss.