Like clouds
And birds that fly
In the same sky-
Blue vastness moving
Fast or slow
Some high
Some low
Others just moving

There are these leaves that pirouette
In breeze competing
With gold sun soaking soft and warm
Into skin chilled and goose-bumped
By winter’s cold touch up
From ground holding
Molding
Purging life’s dormant seed
Spring’s fragrance encapsulated
Held at bay
By cycled season’s change

All the trees green
And grey-barked stand
Or lean
With stooped or twisted years-
Long growing
Broken-crusted trunks bearing
Wounds imperfectly healed
From disease and damage
With limbs lopped off by love misguided
Frustrated
Embarrassed by stares rude
In lack of knowing
Others broad-spread
Or spear-like elongated
Truncated
With roots embedded
Enveloped
Clogged by dirt held fast
In earth and worms and others
Crawling in the greens and greys and browns
Mirrored in the ivy vibrating veined
Colors green
Light-green-young
And dusty darker dull with age straining
Up-reaching red-necked
Above the tangled greys
And decomposing browns
Of dead bedding
Skin shedding
Vegetation clinging
Tight to roots
That outward spread
An endless web

All this in shadow-shifting silence
My eyes seduced by fleeting vignettes fading
Like memories melting
One into another

And not far off in distance’s distance
Great grey-silver nimbus hang
Like old pewter teapots down
From skies a strong wind’s walk away
Threatening to change this mood I’m in
With saltless tears for crying
With thundering for weeping
That I only now imagine
As I watch the sparrows play