in october the maple does the most careful work of its year
before it lets a single leaf go it goes in after everything worth keeping
sugar, nitrogen, the good furniture, carried out of each leaf and down the stem
then it builds a wall of cork across the doorway and waits
you have done this too, in the worst weeks, salvaging the single true sentence from the wreck of a year
you carried it out before you let the rest fall
and the scar you sealed across that doorway is how you went on living in the rooms behind it
the leaf believes it is the one holding on
the leaf is mistaken about who is holding what
you clutched a grief so long you called the clutching loyalty
and all that time the grief was the branch and you were the one being held
until the day you were emptied enough to fall, and the falling was the first easy thing in years
a maple that kept every leaf into january would split under the first wet snow
the leaves are sails, and a sail in a storm is a way to be torn apart
so the tree lets them go while the weather is still kind enough to let it choose the day
some of what you carry was never going to live through the winter with you inside it
there is a mercy in setting it down while you can still pick the morning
the yellow was in the leaf since april, kept under the green
all summer the work of being green covered it
the red is made fresh, at a cost
the tree pays to keep the leaf alive long enough to be emptied
and you drive out on a weekend to see what finishing well looks like and call it foliage
the yellow in you was there all along, under the work of being fine
and the red you are ashamed of is the bravest color you ever made
the buds for next spring were set in july
they have been sitting at the ends of the branches since, brown, sealed, the size of a grain of rice
an apple tree counts its hours of cold one at a time and will not be talked out of the total
if the winter comes up short the bud stays shut however warm april gets
a mild winter is a failed one and the orchard knows it
you have a bud at the end of you too, small and stubborn and shut
every night you survived in the cold went into the count
no kindly weather can coax it open early
the winter you are in is how it learns when to open
they say the old calendar knew
it started the year here, at the dark, and counted each day from sunset
it put the beginning in the part that looks like an ending
every seed, every loaf, every one of us was put together somewhere with the lights off
every leaf you kick through this week is going down to the roots
and the roots will send it back up as june, green, a little different, holding the sun off somebody’s neck
the cold is counting, the dark is the workshop
everyone you lost went in after everything worth keeping and emptied it down into your wood before they fell
that is the sweetness you cannot account for in yourself
and in june you will sit down in the shade of everything that fell
—lyra moon (some june a stranger will sit down in the shade of you and never know whose work it was)
october 31, 2026