Always Looking Up

Above, in the canopy of trees, there is still color.
Bright. Reds. Oranges. Yellows on the birches.
The winds blow and leaves fall like rain,
a week or so past peak, the ghost season
where trees lose their life and become skeletons
just in time for Halloween.

The ground is a crunchy carpet.
How soon the dead turn brown!
How soon the detached die!
Not unlike the souls all around you,
so many left alone to become brittle
and easily broken, ignored after their season of color,
trampled underfoot by those of us
always looking up.

About this poem

Maybe it is the work I do. Maybe it is the fact that I am married to a social worker. Maybe it is maturity. In the past few years, I have become increasingly aware of the abandoned in our society – how prevalent it is, the damage it does, and how isolation is the enemy of life.

Not survival. Life.

Tom