Leaves play whirlwind, tease
each other as school children often do:
flakes of paint fly from village houses
to join them. Wind is calculated
from the Beaufort zero to the mischief
of trashcans upended: smack and boom:
swirling snow knocks on doors and windows.
Empty playground swings seem to rock
invisible children: those exiled
from censured books, those who crayon adults
to dress their black-and-white outlines.
It is enough to know
they skip a few times, pirouette,
and leap into the air with confidence.
After the pressure rises, a few contrails
scratch crystal skies, flags no longer fighting.
Tuckered-out leaves come to rest easy
in dips and sags of lullaby snow, to await
the oncoming disguise of spring.
Frederick Wilbur’s poetry collections are As Pus Floats the Splinter Out, Conjugation of Perhaps and The Heft of Promise. He is poetry co-editor and blogger for Streetlight Magazine. He was awarded the Stephen Meats Poetry Prize for best poem of the year by Midwest Quarterly (2018).
