Roy Herndon Smith
…at the end of the mind…— Wallace Stevens
Stately tall plane trees,
stripped of leaves to their splotchy
brown-grey and white skins
by the late fall cold
outside the window and warmth
of my home today,
are not the frilly,
summer-sprung, pink-flowering,
lime-leaved mimosas
in back of the home
my mother loved, along with
all the trees and me.
The mimosas, like
my mother, are dead. New ones,
somewhere else, leafless,
flowerless, now shake
crowds of dangling brown seed pods
in November winds.
In a dream of home,
a window opens wide to
mellow breezes and
fire-fangled blossoms
drifting down through flickering
narrow beams of light
and deep shade under
a lacy green canopy
of towering trees.
dust 