Chill southern winds shove and pummel grand
leafing maples, stately cedars and firs, day after
day from one month into another, cracking off
thick limbs, hurling them to sodden ground impaled
by deadwood spears, strewn with ragged branches,
some tipped abundantly with leaf buds as firm
and flush as magnolia, fat with futile purpose.
Dwarfed fruit trees—an apple, a pear—
without choice, raise translucent petals,
sturdy as moth’s wings, to this fierceness.
