No longer gowned in emerald green,
these oaken queens cannot pretend
serenity at summer’s end. They clutch
their brown and ragged leaves
and huddle, sullenly aware 
of their gnarled and bony branches
baring all to fall’s advances.

Maples, wearing red and orange splendor
dared to taunt the sovereign oaks.
Now, further insult is supplied by ornamental
junipers whose ever green and springy lace
is tied up safe or wiggles
gaily in the biting autumn wind.

Chagrined, the haggard queens resort
to empty, grotesque gestures while
they rock themselves and wail into the night,
quaking white-faced aspens in the vale
and waking regal willows from their sleep, 
who, moved so by their oaken cousins’ plight,
moan mightily and tear their hair and weep.
                        

Bedecked in lace and diamonds,
yesterday’s stark-naked trees shamelessly
display today the evidence of one long
cold night’s carnality.

Sporting crystal kisses that ignored
no crook or branch, nor twig nor dried up leaf,
they do not mourn their absent lovers – nighttime
mists that paid for pleasure and slipped away dawn.

Instead, they linger in repose, wrapped inside
the traces of a million moist caresses until
the daytime jealousies of sun and wind will strip
from them the splendor of their wintry affairs.