While sitting in my car, I observe them
through the window of a parking garage.
They tower on a nearby hill,
tinted with warm haze;
their dense canopies swim
a sunlit lake of sky.

“Why aren’t you turning?”
one asks a lush green maple.
“You look as though
the overflowing brooks
have flooded your veins
and embalmed you with spring.

“Watch how the poplar behind you
raises its pom-pom branches
and cheers the clouds
with a feathering of yellow,
and the oak shades its trunk
in a scalloped orange cloak.

“The slim aspens drop leaves
that the wind wheels in scarlet eddies.
You can sense nothing but color,
with so little space between,
starlings weave through our pockets
to show where we begin and end.”

The green maple does not answer.
Perhaps it’s holding on,
knowing that in a few weeks,
the others will be stripped by rain.
Only then can it be ready
to display its own beauty.

The turning will finally happen.
It will be clothed in blazing hues,
shining against bare wet branches,
and another person, sitting in a car,
may see something more startling
than I have dreamed today.