There’s a red maple outside my window
And today it is my friend.
I think it’s part of the eternal plan: sustenance
Providing what I need
On this gray afternoon
Approaching winter
Its star-like leaves point in all directions
Filling the space around slender dark branches
Ample, yet not so thick as to block out
The woody light beyond them
Not so blood red as to shrilly shock,
As they might do on a bright October day
When a cerulean sky pulls out all the stops—no,
But glowing, candy-apple red against barren woods
Heavy was my sorrow with thoughts of the grief of man
Through long strides and long reach
We learned to think that we’d prevail
Our hubris, now inspected
Is our score on earth to fail?
There’s a red maple outside my window
And today it is my friend
With leaves alighting and falling,
A-bob in a restless wind
From outside my window they find me
So that I can think I found them!
From depleted eyes, I am rescued
By a maple that knows me as kin
Though heavy may be our sorrow
Our failure, our grief, as man
The maple is there and uplifts us
Whispering not to despair
Nature is boundlessly supple
The rifts and the tears, she mends
With ancient-crafted artistry
Our scrawling curve, she will bend
Like the maple, we are but her creatures
Like the maple, we can be the friend
Come in the darkening season
To uphold earth’s glory again
