The Painting

A beautiful tree stands outside the artist’s house and sheds its leaves each autumn.  A circular rug full of colour forms beneath it.  This is my tribute to the artist’s talent with paint and canvas, and an appreciation of Nature’s reciprocal work of  art using the silver-leafed maple.

You think I’m dying?  I am not!  I paint.
There is my canvas right down there, beneath.
My limbs encircle, sculpt and shape anew
So you can witness all four season’s work.

In summer you admired the silver leaf
That garnished and adorned the underside,
The green on top is lighter than my cousin,
Her palette is more limited than mine.

I flaunt chromatic tints when Autumn comes,
The breeze makes all my leaves glint in the sun
And, one by one, I know they all must fall,
Those shorter days compel me to close down.

The energy I spent, all summer long,
New leaves I grew through warmer, longer days;
Next generation seeds that fell to ground,
Perhaps ejected by the birds they fed.

It tires me now to think of sunless days,
No photosynthesis can help me now,
The long cold sleep to which I must submit
Moves ever closer as the nights draw in.

I am not dying – dormancy is close,
Each leaf-drop one more stroke of Nature’s brush.
I welcome all late visits from the birds,
I host the blackbird’s territorial song.

He does his best to use his yellow beak
To match the gold leaf I dropped yesterday.
The sparrow’s brown blends with Earth’s pigment, soil,
Sun spreads her rays and whispers, ‘Leaves are  mine.’

So, every leaf can incarnate itself
As passers-by admire the finished work.
Record my palette ’til I wake next spring:
Earth, sepia, amber, copper, jaune doré.