Silver backs of brittle leaves, beaten furiously by the wind, wearily mending in ease of the sun, white light that reflects in mirror fashion, the glinting transfer of form, as the leaves take up again, shivering and crashing, a cacophony of fish breaching, fins in flail…scales iridesce, a rise in roar and then the hush,

my face a dual burn of frozen sun, with my eyes shut, I’m a theater of shadow play, the stature of dead, wildflowers and grasses, haunt my hips and finger sway,

gilded leaves release their living bond, in a state of half-life, they fall about me, the minutiae of time, giving a death view through beech hued tissue and veins, the sweet slant of decomposition, my trespass…a funeral march to season

rooks perched upon gnarled limbs, their murder of impenetrable frames, open arcane portals of dimension, I broach the divide, my presence a plague of riot and righteousness, they allow my pass, their tongues hourglass my stay

I open, I liberate, I away,

I’m milkweed down on a course,

of self-perception and appreciation,

I am the approaching…

winter, biting and vast, a landscape of pristine destruction, raw and silencing, my body the fury of squall, my solstice mind an absence of light, my turbine soul a cyclic process…the earth that wombs seeds of daily progress

E.A. O'Connell. December 2018