XXXVII. "Marcescence".

Blush, then.

Go on.

Magnificently. Shamelessly.

Burn yourself to amber, to scarlet,

as though the dying of a thing

were a performance worth the costuming,

worth the bother.

And then release everything,

with the careless grace of a hand

that never learned the weight of coin.

Let it fall.

Let the cold ground have it.

How enviably well-adjusted of you.

The oak belongs to another order of being,

a darker parish altogether.

The botanists, with their cool taxonomy of anguish,

speak of the "abscission zone":

that precise, ruthless,

microscopically appointed layer of cells

whose singular office is severance.

In every other tree it performs

with the dispassion of an executioner.

Mechanical. Clean.

But in the oak,

this trembling, magnificent excess—

a clerical delay in the machinery of letting go.

How recognizably human.

How insistently so.

The oak keeps its dead close

to protect what has not yet lived.

The leaves: armour.

Brown, rattling remnants drawn close

around soft, green, unborn buds,

held there against frost,

against deer,

against the patient ill will of winter

pressing inward from all sides,

always.

A squirrel buries a nut in its crotch and forgets—

with the same careless grace

of a hand

never taught the weight of coin.

For what it’s worth,

-Charlene Iris

One thought at a time.

One truth at a time. 

Because some epiphanies stay with you.