Setting Sun

I walk to Library Park and watch the sun set.

There are days of cold ahead.

The oak is an etching—
an outline, her twisted branches reaching

like swollen broken fingers

fighting the fracturing cold.

The firmament blushes.

Each figment of her bark recedes until

she is but one stoic profile

of complicated, simple beauty.

She is a silhouette—

a dark profile against the sailor’s delight sky

shining from behind the steeples of Bath.

Her boughs pierce the heart of winter.

As each twig disappears in the gloaming,

I watch.

There are days I don’t wish for Spring.

“Setting Sun” is from Similarities (Finishing Line Press, 2012).