Lisa Russ Spaar
Red Maple
The year’s annulment
is at hand: summer’s guises
collapsed across the lawn,
a gravel of beechnuts, acorns,
starved, gilt ruins—weak stains.
But this vermilion escapade
burning through the sad year’s
slink of mist, how does it know me?
With God’s secret thus disclosed,
was Mary—this way—
italicized? aflame, suddenly,
with the revenge of transitory things?