When the Trees Bow to Frost

“Even the roots know what silence foretells.”

The maples whisper as their blood retreats,

sap slipping into roots like secrets carried below,

and they bow, not from burden but from knowing,

for winter has already touched the threshold of their veins.

✦

The air sharpens, its breath edged with silver,

it brushes my lips cold as prophecy,

tasting of rivers stilled in memory;

even the soil exhales slower now,

a long sigh thick with the musk of leaves surrendering their fire.

✦

The oaks murmur we have stood through this before,

their bark creaking like doors in the dark,

and beneath them frost unspools a pale script—

each blade of grass etched in glass,

each stone glazed with warning.

✦

A crow tears the silence raw,

the forest shudders, its breath becoming story:

autumn loosens its grip,

and winter waits—

not as conqueror, but as inevitability,

a pale rider entering the wood.