Clela Reed Verse-Virtual 2016 December

December 2016

Surrounded by the deep forest of my Athens, Georgia, home, I’ve always been affected by the “warm clouds” of beech leaves that persist through winter. This poem, like many of my others, explores the tension between what we know (the science) and what we feel. My poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, The Atlanta Review, Colere Journal, and many other journals and magazines. My fourth and most recent collection of poetry, The Hero of the Revolution Serves Us Tea (Negative Capability Press, 2014), is based on my Peace Corps service in Romania (2010-2011).

Beech Leaves in Winter

Most of what I know of God
is in the pale leaves of the beech tree,
the way they hold on all winter,
golden in sunlight against drab trunks
and empty branches,
warm clouds layered
through the gray-cold of the forest.

Marcescense, the botanists call it:
An absence of barrier skin
where leaf joins limb.
Without it, release rips open wounds,
so the leaves hold tight
against the winds and rain,
let the snow clump and then melt away,
endure.

I know intent belies the science,
but what accounts for beauty?
And what in their flickering light lifts in me
both courage and inexplicable sadness?

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