Autumn trees: IV Touch

I had thought that the 'Autumn Trees' sequence had finished, but another poem has emerged to make some sort of ending for the four poems which now form this section.

This is the latest of them.

IV.      Touch

Only the unfortunate remain.

Down on their luck, a sorry sight.

Stained, shapeless, flaunting,

shamelessly, a refusal to accept

the mandatory modern mode

of stark black fighting grey.

I take one from a branch’s end.

It separates with ease and

moisture at the break tells me

the xylems are still feeding

to the death.

The leaf, now in my hand,

is leather landscape:

polder patchwork

burnt by water’s lack;

vein roads; gashed,

empty lakes of eaten space,

and darker urban shades.

Perhaps bombardment, aerial view,

distinct and photo-like.

Broken to satisfy a

light poetic whim!

- And with the body? -

By my cup, motionless. 

But with a speed that is too slow

for my fast life to see,

its withering accelerates,

because of me.

                      

                       And now,

between end pages,

folded twice, it’s
pressed into my notes.

I think that this will be the end of this topic for the moment, but as I see these trees each time I have a swim who knows what may come of the seasons yet untouched!