O.Henry
September 2012
Tree Poem The yellow maple in my back yard is slowly undressing, dropping each golden garment down to her feet. She’s even tossing to the wind, her satin ribbons and the bows in her hair, stripping off her sleeves. Soon she’ll be down to bare bones. Once I saw a small red Japanese maple disrobe all at once; a single shake and every leaf she wore puddle the ground around her. The Art & Soul of Greensboro
I want to tell these irrant maples they should save their salient selves and be like the beech. Beech trees keep their leaves, hold them fast, even if they’re tan and torn, let them sing in the wind, sigh on sunny days, lick the laughing rain. Then when spring comes winging green, so green even the air stings green, then, then only then, the old leaves flying, flinging, finally let go. — Ruth Moose Ruth Moose teaches creative writing at UNC-Chapel Hill and has published 6 collections of poems, including The Librarian and Other Poems, which recently went into a third printing. September 2012
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