BARE BOUGHS

Now the boughs are bare, and more than naked,
The flesh is gone, except for trees like firs
That keep their sense of bulk with solider-
Seeming needles. The locusts, maples, oaks

Are skeletal, and shreds of leaves that still
Cling accent the falling off, the shedding.
The filmy moon backlights the overspreading
Gauzy sky, a firmament unfulfilled,

Boding, omened, gravid, seeking signs
Of another circling pass around the sun:
Autumn gone–where’s winter’s oblivion?
The farther side of night aha the star-shine

Where comb-like margins of brittle arboreal bones
Are thrust from the forest’s ferny catacombs.

(67, November 18, 1992)

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