emerald sea

Dying Leaves

the sunset of the year has come
and all across the sky
the hovering colors gather round
to kiss the Sun good night

the artist of the coming night
paints dying dark'ning silhouettes
of trees in life again...
each forest, his palette

crimson, amber, carmine brown
burnt sienna, mandarin -
flaming copper in the sun's late glow -
autumn leaves escape their rainbow

(leave to ride the wings of air,
ambling slowly down the paths
of wind, floating, falling...
soft on the cold earth-floor

to weave themselves to blankets
warming the ground for winter
cuddling closer to its face,
melding until one with soil)

but paint cannot revive the dead
nor color hide the corpse
the year has fallen, and its breath
has drawn to final peace

the naked trees that solemn stand
to mourn the death of Summer
preside o'er ruin and decay
as monuments of what once was

the blanket crackles underfoot
as trudging travelers wander home...
shriveled, brown, and broken relics
decomposing into soil

the leaves that gave their life
to warm the earth return
to dust, from which will rise
and grow new saplings, verdant life
in resurrecting Spring

Death each year gives birth to Life
decay renews heart-soil for fresh growth...
if we surrender our will, we regain
but merely 'painting' is in vain


..... my mind is full of paradoxes...how at times joy follows closely on the steps of sorrow, how in giving something up we may be opening our hands for a gift of something infinitely better....and i realize that what we view as the midnight of our souls may in fact be the dark passageway down to the door which opens to the life for which we had longed.

what feels like an ending, like a death of all we desired in life, may actually be a new beginning. when we have lost all, all our options are open, because we no longer have anything to lose. sometimes the replacement is an upgrade from the original. if we give up our own will we gain the way things were meant to be....we embrace that reality over which we never had any control in the first place.