In the dying of the leaves
All summer the warm wind rustles the golden leaves
Like a shimmering of tea lights at dusk
It seems this will last forever
But now as the sky goes gray with the brooding clouds
And the morning wind chills the air
Everything looks to the impending gloom of winter.
Those once golden leaves turn all colors
Some redden into brilliant hues
Others into fall colors that make New Hampshire into a Persian rug.
The wind conspires with the trees to allow the leaves to fall
Its force and ferocity at times justly earning the title
of its “Windy City” locale
And ironically only in the dying of the leaves do
their true colors become revealed.
Who would have guessed that the uniformity of chlorophyll had been masking
Each one’s genetic uniqueness.
Who would have predicted this veritable luscious intoxication of color
A painter’s paradise of acrylic.
Where she once glorified in rustling through her branches
Welcomed for spreading pollen and fertilizing the next generation of flora
She now participates in the death throes
that will leave the tree bereft and skeletal
In its winter survival mode.
That same wind blew the crematoria ashes for miles
Leaving a frosty powder of victims’ skeletal remains
Covering the green grass
Of the countryside with its secrets
Europe remains a vast graveyard
The culmination of kultur and technology
The end of the experiment of the Enlightenment.
That wind heralded a new winter
A nuclear wasteland of the soul
With its newer genocides and atrocities
And the red bloodlust increases each time
with the use of “neutral” technology.
In the dying of its victims
Their true colors are revealed
A Persian rug of pain and suffering
A multicolored pastiche of human misery
The torturer’s brush uses tears instead of acrylic.
