Leaves – a poem

Leaves

 

Descending in technicolour glory,

Laid out in their finery,

In full regal costume.

Leaving behind skeletons

Of black silhouettes

To stand stark

Against the graphite skies

And crimson sunsets

Of winter.

 

Congregating in orange drifts

To whisper together in the breeze,

To cavort as whirling dervishes

In one last orgy of delight

Before subsiding

Into final rest

To give their strength back

To the soil.

 

Opher 9.11.2018

 

 

The remembrance services make me reflect on the futility of life. We are born, live our lives in a brief burst of colour and are recycled back to the soil from where we drew our strength.

Men in those trenches, a hundred years ago, were still green. They never had their chance to rustle in the summer breeze or feel the sun. Their autumn came sudden and returned them to the ground too early.

Yet there is such beauty in the autumn leaves, resplendent in their colours, and the skeletal trees stripped of their clothes. There is wonder in life, no matter how brief.