Page 8

I stood as plainly as a tree

I stood as plainly as a tree

That fears the approach of this ghastly autumn

Then I saw one just like me

A sense of sadness, from top to bottom

Beside the bench, outside this park,

A few of its branches form an arc.

Forming in harmony with the sun

As it sets to end this day,

Dead branches crack, as children run

The other branches mourn and pray

Five hundred of them, or maybe more

Each and every one feeling terribly sore.

The leaves upon them bravely clung; they had

Barely life left, but a beautiful paint;

A poet could not feel but sad

To see the death of something so quaint;

I stared— and stared— but had not known

What privilege this scenery to me had shown.

For oft, when in bed I wake

To nightmares and a lighted moon,

They spur my thoughts of that rooted stake

Which tells me the coming spring is soon;

Then my heart, it conceives

The beauty of those branches and leaves.