Holding Out . . .

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Random Winter Thoughts
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Although the shortest day of the year
Is well behind us
The coldest months
Are in front of us
To be borne as one may
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In the Spring the sap rose
Circulating through arboreal veins
Bringing life to buds
Which burst forth in leaves
Leaves basking
In the summer sun
Green faces breathing
Weaving and waving when the wind blew
As they have been doing
These past few hundred million years or so
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When the Fall came
The sap began to withdraw
The leaves began to wither
Changing from green to gold to brown
Toward the end of October
The winds blew harder
The rains came
The leaves began to fall
Soon in droves they let go
Released, they traced
Their various paths
Inevitably down
Back down to the ground
Returning to the Earth
To become soil again
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Yet in the last days of November
I saw there were still a few survivors
Who refused to let go
Hanging on tenaciously
Looking down from their height
Not willing to return to the mud
Maybe loving the view
From up there
Company only to birds
Who might alight
For a moment
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For a few days
I marvelled at those survivors
Though they finally succumbed
To the same forces
As their brethren leaves
Before them
What will then drove them
To hang on longer
Clinging against all hope
To their tiny uppermost branch
Unwilling to let go
What desire what motive
What emotion
Inspired them
To stay just one more day
And then another ?
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And what matter all this ?
I thought I might say something deep
Something quite profound
But I fear what I have uttered here
Is trite, perhaps rather shallow
Like a field that’s lying fallow
With potential buried
But no life growing
Barren
Where no seed was sown
And time wanders onward
I wonder if I’ve grown ?
What matter these words
This heart that beats
This breath that pains to speak ?
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Yet I would hold on
Like those leaves
I would hold on
Another day
Just one more day
One more breath
Fighting
The wind
The heartless
Winter wind
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At the end of November
The skies gave way to grey from blue
And then there were two . . .
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