Don’t turn facts into pumpkin-spiced similes.
Editor’s note: I hope you enjoy this original, slop-free poem that I wrote with my own hand. For the audio version of this poem, which I recorded, visit my Substack. (And consider taking out a paid subscription, too, while you’re there.)
The leaves are not dying because they were
never alive in the first place. The trees
are the living things, and the leaves are organs
full of cells full of chloroplasts for harvesting light.
We were taught this in kindergarten as
we copied the fingerprints of an ash
or maple onto wax paper with a crayon:
the leaves make food so the tree can eat
and so we can breathe cleaner air and this
is why the leaves are green and the sky is blue
and there’s really no reason to go making
up metaphors where there aren’t any—
let the trees stand and let the leaves fall
and I’m probably going out on a limb here
but that’s because the public schools aren’t
what they used to be and the kids
aren’t taught logic, nor can they tell
a syllogism from a deciduous tree—
oh, but now I’m getting off track, because
my real point is to remind you that this season
abounds in metaphors, so let’s not go
looking too hard for one to help us make sense
of our frail, fleeting life that changes
from green to red or yellow or rust
as the sun’s rays angle lower in the sky,
as the days drop from the tree of your life,
never to be put back on the stem again.
So, instead of talking about death where
death isn’t actually taking place, consider the fact
that the colorful pigment in the leaf is present
year-round, like, say, that grief you carry
or the hope and love you pour into an endeavor
that might not ever get done, but it’s
the green pigment from the light harvesters,
turning the sun’s energy into starches and sugars,
that hides those hues, that conceals the deeper
reality of things that lies hidden just below
the surface of your eyes that even now
are starting to brim with tears.
So don’t talk about the leaves dying;
they are being let go by the tree after
a summer of growth and hard work.
It’s a protective mechanism, an
intentional abscission, a means to retain water
for the long winter months, and this is
terribly convicting for someone who
tends to white-knuckle his way through life,
clinging to good things even when it’s time to move on.
The veins in the leaf did not labor in vain
and neither have you, though it’s hard to see that now.
Autumn is an apocalypse, a revealing
of life’s inner workings that could only be unveiled
as October’s truth slants across the yard
onto a pile of time and energy and dreams
that your kids raked up with twice as much
joy and cheerfulness as you can muster on a good day.
Turn and repent and believe, for the kingdom
of light is drawing near and this colorful farewell
is trying to show you something, to say something.
But don’t turn facts into pumpkin-spiced similes;
let the shorter days and colder wind do their thing
and take heart: the leaves are not dying.
