poem

 November Trees

November trees retire

For the winter 

Line up like brooms

In the closet

All the work done

Here it never ends

Artificial lights and electrical hum

Of mechanical mops   

Morning noon and night 

The sick and deranged wheeled through

Automated sliding glass doors

Like deli slicers 

Where professionals are waiting 

On blood stained floors

Days blur into blocks of semi-urgent surgeries

As seasons happen on the other side of giant windows

Like someone changing the channel

Or maybe it's the same—

One show bleeding into the next 

Here there is no cycle of time

Only binary juxtapositions

Guarded and stable

Pained and palliated

Coming and going

Sleeplessness and won't wake up

A quickening and swirling around the drain

The doctors acquire far off faces

Drained of color and vigor

The haggard look of the starved

Though there is plenty here to savor

All the floors are made of dirt

Swept smooth

But never mistaken for clean

Whatever you touch sticks and can’t be rinsed 

Sterile technique is the secret

But it means lifelessness

Everyone here dies 

Everyone here knows it

It’s only leaves that grow back 

12/3/24