Cold Maple

Cold Maple
By Christopher J. Bradley
October 15 1998

Now your leaves fall again
Rain and Hail spit from Heaven
Red-Black leaves turn brown
And my feet feel the cold of the earth.

You are frozen standing up
The water flicks your skin
A light brown bark darkens
And cracks with age.

It's been 3 years
Since I started counting
And I still weather with you
Unable to stop smoking.

The moonlight glares off one face
while your other is blackness
and streetlights comfort you
in the silence of night.

A junkie wouldn't have made
Three years worth of progress.
Watching you as you live naked
Clears my optical fibers.

A future is coming
Furiously Rapid
Where trees will spring up
In Virtual Space.

I hope I still feel
when it happens
and that I don't forget again
where we both were grown.