Myrtle Trees

After the rain, they stand wide, web-barked, and glistening.

The mature leaves display evolving colors of fall, covered

with an airborne oil to happily inhale for its fragrant clarifying expression.

The touch of the bark is like a big, friendly pet of a dusty dog

or a rub on the head of an old, muscled, dust-covered bull.

If you’re quiet enough and in touch with patience, you sense them leaving.

We are just another passing leaf below them. Their roots are too old to care.

Their expanding walls of thin bark remind you that nature knows—

even as we become more substantial, we stretch hollow inside.

They are the crack in the veneer between life and decline.

A living shell of our perceptions, often as beautiful as their leaves,

which subtly change color and depart in a mixed array.

The old know—not every figured eye at dusk will see

rust-colored leaves fall in the unshaped dawn.