An October Tree Overlooks the Mississippi (2012)

An October Tree Overlooks the Mississippi

Surrounded by drying,

Half-dying leaves,

Desperate to wrest a bit more sun

To their curling bodies

Before winter hisses its frosty breath on them,

A long clutch of leaves

Holds fast to red.

Brilliant, like a Christmas sled

In a Norman Rockwell,

How could my eye

Catch sight of anything else?

It spans the length of the trunk

And reaches, reaches,

To the limits of a sky-brushing branch.

It’s as if the onset of winter

Crawls up from below,

And if it can just get high enough,

Its color won’t bleed away

Or force it to fall.

It’s like a scarlet snake,

An autumn anaconda

Slithering its way always upward.

It’s like a forgotten scarf

Beginning to slip down a coat rack,

Still clinging by its tassels.