As I stand beneath the spreading chestnut
in the orchard behind the fence,
as I watch the falling leaves
amble down invisible stairways
then drop softly to the ground,
I feel driven to be profound,
isn’t this the stuff poets love?
don’t these brown-edged leaves
carry secrets about cycles of life and death
among their gnarled veins?
shouldn’t the flooding orange colors
and the vanishing islands of green
remind me of the ebbing of my days?
or are these falling leaves
subtle symbols of a fantasy autumn,
of fresh winds and warm rains
that tingle the skin and the senses?
I think that surely they must be more,
that surely there is a message, a warning,
and if only I were more profound
my life would change, I’d be forever good.
I would look back on my forty-six years
and see my days falling away behind me
like spent leaves to the distant ground,
and I would step hard on each passing leave
so that my footprints would stand out
on the unseen bed below,
but I thought this when I was thirty-six
and before, when I was twenty-six,
and now I think these thoughts again,
but all I do is breathe the autumn air.