First Frost    

the air this morning is crystal crisp with the triple point of first frost,
bites back as you breathe,
life frozen in its own breath.
the hollow there shines of grass gone to glass in the ice dew,
shards of light glisten as prisms pulverized in the mint white.
here, a sugar maple begs its triage prayer with hands frozen in glass gloves,
the thatch-weave of those fractal fingers shines as a spiderweb bright
with sunlight that gleams down dumb.
this now-near ghost of a maple where
those scads of schizocarpi mound
the ground, the carpet whose cornflake crunch hangs slightly acrid in the air.
enjoy the planned obsolescence of these maple leaves,
gone red and blue in soft supernova.
evergreen needles that scatter like iron filings on the force of the Great Magnet.
nothing green can go.
or how the wind plays those tree skeletons,
a low railroad moan,
and see those coffee tree leaves scurry, rustle, whirl
on the whim of wind,
a colony queenless they swarm nowhere,
their call a rattle without a snake.