An Autumn Leaf-Poem

This verse surfaced in my email archives, which I've been sorting and thinning out. Apparently I wrote it when I was 19 years old. Since it's reasonably seasonal, I've tidied it up a bit and will post it...

***

Subtle changes: newly cold
mornings, and shining sun
warmly calling forth the red
and yellow of the trees

Stir of wind, a whirl of leaves;
drifts of sweetly smelling
orange and brown and fading green;

squirrels bending over treasures
of walnuts, buried in the soil:
wetted, it still retains a
morning coolness and the dew.

Drying moss in concrete's cracks:
there grainy soil is dark with rain.
The blurred mud shadow of a leaf
trodden in the driveway.

— Nothing new, since through the ages
foliage has come and gone,
winds of desolation swept
through avenues that are made green
with towering maples and with oaks

— but something that still tells me of
great change and tides of fate and time,
better seasons, bitter years
yet life that thrives in spite of all.