Licking my wounds

The Last Leaf

The wind blows and the leaves fall,
Releasing the weathered branches that gave them life,
They whirl and spin to the pile of rot below.
Like shooting stars running to meet the night,
Soaring and burning, they crash to the ground.

But not all will choose this way to dance!

I am the last leaf.
My coat is scorched brown from the alluring heat of Summer
And once again aches for the green of a Spring birth.
I cleave to the branch my brothers have given up for dead.
Day after day, I watch them dance on the breeze,
These are thrills I will never know.
My branch quakes in the wind and sags from the strain.

But still,

I hold on.

Believing against belief,
That although the Fall has come,
The Winter never will.

Once the leaves hit the ground, they all look the same.



...Or Not To Be

What would it be to dissolve and cease
To lie down in a puddle and just...give in
To give up on me and give in to peace
To let transient forces break down my skin

To be a lone cloud in a near cloudless sky
And feel my thin wisps licked clean by the sun
To be cotton candy, once cumulus and high
But now, but a glaze on a sugar-drenched tongue...

...And what would it be if this already was
Myself, just a dot on an impressionist's brush
Smeared on a canvas where other dots pause
To pierce through my borders with a gentle harsh push

And what would it be if this could but be!
An eternal forfeit in the face of a fall
Choosing to end with my last chance to choose
Believing, Ï'm nothing,"then believing nothing at all.

What would this be, this nihilist's dream
Where I could lie down without taking a fall
And pull out my stitches at each careworn seam
Free from doubt, free from faith, free from choice, free from all.