The inferno of fall has all but passed.
I am left only burnt orange leaves,
bare bones of birch,
the lonely dark skeletons of
maple and elm
against the evening sky
as the world moves necessarily
toward its winter’s suspension.

I remember how Ivelise cried
at her first sight of the bare trees
that New England January.
She swallowed their stark loneliness
until she choked
with longing for her verdant island.
She didn’t know then
the trees were only
waiting.

Today, from Santo Domingo,
Ivelise typed me a message with “hope”
in the subject line. She
wrote how trees felled by the hurricane
have begun to release new green leaves.
The city’s vista renews itself.
With time,
all will come to be lush
once more.

I think of her,
and I plant a crocus bulb;
my fingers scrape
into already cold earth.
I plant for the next
turn of the cycle.
I imagine
reawakening.