Sugar Maple,
do you still listen
for the whistle of White-Throated Sparrow?
Autumn Blaze,
will you miss the shock
of Cardinal escaping fiery branches?
Black Tupelo,
are you ready to release
your coral leaves and give in to time?
Gold Leaf Ginkgo,
is there beauty in dying—
so you can begin again?
Red-Tailed Hawk sweeps overhead.
Sun hangs low in the haze. As I wait in the balance
the trees call to me—
“It’s a slow waltz,” they say.
“We have deep roots,
and our leaves touch the sky.”
“Yes, they will fall,
but we will see them soon.
You will always see the sun in us.”
“It is in the birds,
and it is in you.”
Angie Kinman is a writer, reading interventionist, and retired teacher living in Nashville, Tennessee. She was passionate about teaching poetry to her students for 34 years. However it was not until the loss of her daughter that she began to write poetry. It is a spiritual practice where she finds healing.
