Just One Month Away

How strange the road seems;
Just one month away from it;
Branches don't hide birds.

Acrid smell of smoke
Floats on the balmy breezes;
Birds call through the haze.









Sparkles in the stream
Floating between banks of leaves
Make faint tinkling.












Bending fence shadows
Trace the angles of the sun
In soft spikiness.

With winter's approach
Dead log becomes nursery:
Seedlings and lichen.

The very last leaf
Hangs jerkily on the breeze;
Will it last the day?










By side of the road
I clip off my fingernails--
Now part of the earth.

Brown rules the forest;
Blanket beneath the bare trees;
Balmy breezes blow.