Cusp

CUSP

“Some things change and some stay the same,”
I told my son when his father and I separated.
“Love stays the same. Our love for you stays the same.”

But summer yielding its stubborn opulence,
its warmth to autumn chill, defies
things staying as they are.
The verdant trees will undress, will stand naked
and exposed as we hunch against the cold
rushing towards us like time, like age.

But today, the trees are still wide-skirted,
flouncy and flourishing in their green exuberance,
as I from this side of the pane watch them become
dark masses, though not yet the pencilled winter
silhouettes of their former selves.

What comfort to me these sentinels, in full garb or not,
their roots unraveling like imagination,
their resilience and stately beauty astounding me,
as when I befriended my first, a willow,
and felt a kinship I could not explain
(nor would have if I could have, so as not to reveal)
that refuge of upright trunk, my spine against its spine——
that sheltering presence, sinuous, shameless in the wind.

Most things change; few if any stay the same,
I know now, as I change in ways both seasonal and
abiding. I lose leaves that will not regenerate.
There are cycles to which I will not return.
Roots that have died, fruits I will not form.
This is how it should be, or at least how it is
at this cusp of today and tomorrow,
of this season and the next.

But tonight I am here, not there. Here,
looking through a pane at the world
become a black monolith, the light coming
from inside my home. And I am reminded of the light
within the abode of my being,
inextinguishable, no matter the season
or the end of seasons.