the autumn leaves have been burned
by a scorching sun, no use for them now;
dropped from blackened fingers,
rusted into the gutters, wells, streams,
clogged by detritus, damming.
they are naked, the trees;
clothes burned off in a plague of catharsis,
sunlight exposing only a skeleton of truth,
unlike us, who strip in the sun, the trees lie naked in winter. their night-time, striking like lightning into the sky
against afternoon sunsets.
daring you to stare, at the tarsals,
bare bones of a soul too old to know.
they burst, in a flurry of foliage,
through the seams of the fields,
our stitching gives, there, woven turf
not enough to cage Her hands.
but we cut the limbs off, there, and burn them.
she was asking for it, we said,
growing over our fence like that.
YOU ARE READING
Unbroken • Poetry
Poetryeven the leaves will not break beneath her touch "All art is quite useless." - Oscar Wilde
