1
The few remaining leaves drift down,
the breeze freeing them from the tree,
from their source of life, to return
to Earth and find some new fashion
that fits their now fulfilled life.
Is it like this with us? Are we, too,
being released on a breeze to drift
endlessly down in a new autumn
of humanity? Do we just accept our lot
as the inevitable outcome, the price
to pay for the thousand preceding generations?
I don’t know.
There’s peace in such acceptance —
but that’s a privilege of age.
I can drift down from the top of the tree,
but my children? They are the leaves
that barely budded, or the buds
that never appeared at all.
What peace will they find
in a breeze like this? No bud,
no leaf. Shit, not even a tree.
Their forest is gone.
Their grassland is gone.
While I write this poem in peace.
2
And yet, how do we repair?
How do we enrich?
This breathing place is filled
with hours of peace
and moments of violence
as nature always is.
My brain knows so much is broken,
and yet, the breeze…
A new moment may arise.
Fire, blizzard, destruction —
we know how it goes —
yet if we cannot see what this is,
this beauty, this peace, this moment of tranquility,
then how do we repair?
How do we rejuvenate?
This wild beauty must be our salvation.
3
The turkey flock comes across the garden.
The woodpecker saves the poplar
from the killer insect under its bark.
But the insect dies.
The bug nourishes the bird.
Are we not to be the same?
Nourishment for another creature?
Or are we the next dinosaurs
powering a future creature
as they extract our million-year-old
remains from beneath the Earth?
We don’t know. Our fate
is undetermined. Perhaps fire will come.
4
I want to repair the world.
Yet this peaceful breeze says,
“I don’t need you.”
I suppose at some point
we are all irrelevant, our legacy
hardly mattering for, at best,
we were a mere mouthpiece of the angels.
They arrive from the stars
on the sun’s rays,
and they brush our hair with the breeze.
Indeed, all the world is holy
and we are its mere beneficiaries.
5
And, I still want to repair the world.
For my children.
For your children.
What about you?
— Anthony Signorelli