Fall

Greens pale and spent

I hang in clusters of the autumnal wreck

Chased and thrashed by the wicked wind

Paper skin bruise-stained in shades

of amber and ochre. 

Mottled by trouble and time.

My mind's somewhere;

Oscillating between resilience and ambivalence 

Vines are too thin and the grasp too frail

This faltering is an inevitable consequence 

of dislodged courage 

I embrace the dismantling 

Erupt into a fiery canopy of 

calloused fragments.

The sheltering ashen sky's heavy

with my scattered auras of red.

Can't the breaking-to-pieces be just as beautiful

as growth, knowing that

it is a cathartic passage to thriving?

Can't the feeling of fear

be the resurrection of resolve 

within a beating core 

that endures loss and anticipates harvest?