Late-term branches sag
Sweet and heavy fruit bending even gnarled
Rough wood
Green and smooth underneath
as ever
Leaves burn scarlet and amber
Cloying smoke carrying us into winter
Inviting us into dark and glittering days
Like nights
Shrouded and shadowed
Encased and unreachable
We forget these dead spires
Sheltered us, laughing, from summer storms
Scraped our knees and elbows as we climbed
Hiding us from dinner or bedtime or worse
We huddle inside until
Things makes sense again in March
Relieved by the miracle
of hard buds unfurling into waxy blossoms
Exploding with good news
Familiar, yet somehow different from last time
Apples and maples and elms
Change their stories all the time
(Maybe we forget them)
But nobody accuses trees of being
Internally inconsistent