Most of what I know of God
is in the pale leaves of the beech tree,
the way they hold on all winter,
golden in sunlight against drab trunks
and empty branches,
warm clouds layered
through the gray-cold of the forest.
Marcescense, the botanists call it:
An absence of barrier skin
where leaf joins limb.
Without it, release rips open wounds,
so the leaves hold tight
against the winds and rain,
let the snow clump and then melt away,
endure.
I know intent belies the science,
but what accounts for beauty?
And what in their flickering light lifts in me
both courage and inexplicable sadness?
Beech Leaves in Winter by Clela Reed | Sandalwood Poetry Reed Diffuser Set
Clela Reed is the author of seven collections of poetry. The most recent, Silk (Evening Street Press, 2019), won a 2020 Georgia Author of the Year award. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Atlanta Review, Valparaiso Review, Red Door, One Art and many others. A former English teacher and Peace Corps volunteer, when not traveling or shooing deer from her garden, she lives and writes with her husband in their woodland home near Athens, Georgia
