I look for the moon, nearly
hidden by clouds. Its splintered
light falls on cold walls,
giving cold comfort on a cold night.
And night is an imponderable.
It’s a dead leaf in my mind.
It’s a fragment from an unreal place,
existing in an unreal time.
When younger I felt strong,
but as I’ve grown older,
somewhow things went wrong.
I used to drink whiskey,
now I sip tea, as I watch a leaf,
twist randomly in the wind,
as it falls from the branches
of a dying maple tree.
Once I would seek a metaphor,
and weave it into poetry.
Now I see only a leaf,
and that leaf means nothing to me.