The trees spit their leaves at the wind
only to have them hurled back,
swirling like cyclones
before pelting the ground and piling
into brittle, skittering drifts.
The ones that remain are battered and dull,
as if the effort to cling to life
has become an end in itself.
Tears are tricked from my eyes,
jumping rather than falling, as if flung from my face –
innocent of emotion, except perhaps wonderment
that the only moisture in the air comes from my body,
that I only feel the fat, wet drops when they fall.
At night, naked branches dance wildly in the dark.
It sounds as if the ocean is outside my window,
and I dream of childhood by the sea.
It is impossible to tell the passage of time –
the day breaks, windswept already,
long after I wake.
Winter is upon us.
