The Gardener in Fall

Leaves fall in the birdbath,
their color vibrant against the dry stone.

It is cold,
and November’s harsh wind,
has stripped the trees,
an angry rape

that leaves beauty’s flotsam
pirouetting to the ground,
bright color on green,
the white windflowers no longer innocent,

but witness to death, knowing
their time too will come.
Cold respects no one.

You walk past,
your size nine and a half shoes
crackling the leaves under your feet,
thinking not of the drama of death

beneath you, but
of the warmth inside the doors beyond,
of the bright colors left from the wind’s last
massacre, those survivors
that still hang doggedly to the trees

It is your plague, this
blindness that sees beauty
even in the cruel seasons.
And in the spring?
When all the earth erupts?

You are a madman,
your eyes too full of passion
to survive.

And that is why it suits you to be
to live in your November,
for you are better at surviving,
than dancing.

About this poem.

I don’t even know what this poem is about. I was looking at pictures I had taken in the garden of the woman I love (yes, the picture above is one of those) and these words lept to my head, almost faster than I could write them down.

They must mean something. Perhaps, if you figure it out, you can let me know. Me? I’ll just let the sound of them roll off my tongue.

Tom