Sacrifice

I stood beneath the ash tree
Full of guilty appreciation
For the splendid death of its leaves,
The mass sacrifice at Nature’s behest,
Because I knew the parting must have been cruel.
Their colors were pure and liquid
(I could feel them running through my fingers)
And as I stood among them
I heard their empty veins cracking like bones,
And I felt the arrival of a new, darker season
When moons and harvests would ride the equinox
And bronze latitudes as if they were horses,
To rout summer’s honeyed inertia.

Melinda Giordano is from Los Angeles. Her pieces have appeared in Scheherazade’s Bequest, The Rabbit Hole, Lazuli Literary Group, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and After The Art among others; she was also twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She speculates on remarkable things–the secret lives of the natural world.