abscission

Skies turn heartless 
and the world gives up her ornaments. 
Leaves fall, trees bare 
as though earth shows her bones. 
The vibrant branches writing glory on the sun
are all stripped naked. They keep reaching
anyway. It feels like every day 
is just another anthem 
of the cold, the bare, the empty. 
Knolls and nubs and bark, 
devoid of life, gone silent, but
still standing. Sometimes when the clouds 
desert the far horizons, the vast sky 
is cold and hard and and blue as sapphire, 
as stained glass of chapel window, 
and the branches are the lattice-work
of iron, sun-gilt, ice-clad,
shaping panes. Maybe it’s pain
that shows our art. Maybe the heart
stripped bare declares 
the always-seen yet never-known. Maybe
the sap deep in these trunks still sings 
spring songs. Let me 
be winter trees. And let me see 
what I have always owned
but not come home to,
as these bones unclothe
and branches strip of all but sap like joy, 
and hope like marrow.  

- TLE