Golden Trees

By Ramey Channell

All through that passionate summer, 

with our intemperate sun

burning and beckoning,

your face remained the face of a child,

still dreaming dreams of childhood

as you played beneath summer trees.

 

Then, like changing leaves and seasons,

so quickly you became

what you had not been.

Climbing skyward into the mass of gold and red,

you left behind familiar earth and dreams,

seeking higher, newer things.

 

I watched the sudden change as you,

bewitched by one cool breeze,

balanced in a world

I had forgotten many autumns before.

Now, with your new cool and careless face before me,

I am haunted by memories of golden trees.

 

 

 

 

Published in Ordinary and Sacred as Blood: Alabama Women Speak, 1999, River’s Edge Publishing