Foliage

Even the man who dozes on cardboard

in the Common, wearing a bright knit cap,

has picked clover and lady's thumb to stick

in the cosmos of his shopping cart.

These last warm days, wanting to deny

what's frozen and gray ahead, I admire

the star turns of my town's great trees.

Sunbursts, and the alizarin crimson

of our maples' explosions, a kind of payoff

(I want to think) for all the dying,

yet something I'm part of-part of me-

like my feet, planted deferentially

in this old park, my hands red at my sides,

my head nodding and shaking in the leafy air.