Green Hanging On

A wind has blown the rain away and blown the sky away and all the leaves away, and the trees stand. I think, I too, have known autumn too long. ~
e.e. cummings

Perhaps I am a bear, or some hibernating animal underneath, for the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me.~
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

This is the chestnut tree.
A sentinel keeping watch
over the green.

Every year it hangs on
to a summer long forgotten
Soon it will be a skeleton
The green of its leaves
a mere memory

Today, a blizzard in Scotland,
they say
Down south we have no snow
Just the frozen certainty
of more cold to come.