Elm, Elm, Elm,

leaves are gone

¿so soon?

Hardly seen them.

Withered, crumpled, blackened…

¿But why these words?

¿Would we e’er call them towering, plain, eye-seeringly sickly green

in the o’erbearing summer?

Slowly…

I scoop them in my icy-dried granite hands—

But race, the thoughts—

I must, I can’t…

There’s nowhere to preserve them

from their abusive but necessary relation with the sun & clouds.