The Truth About the Fall

The Truth About The Fall:

A Sestina

There’s something about October and the leaves

in Boston that I can’t describe. Blanketing the green

grasses of the Public Garden, falling

in operatic syncopation, yellowing

to gold and brown… Beautiful, yes, but honestly

not as thrilling as watching tonight’s Red

Sox game. That’s what I’m thinking when a red

sunset sets that maple ablaze; a brave leaf

escapes, gets whipped about by that dishonest

breeze who tricked it into jumping before all the green

had drained from its arboreal abode. Its yellow

sisters cling to their branches, giggling at the fool’s downfall,

ignorant of their own fate. It reminds me of some other Fall,

or maybe it was that poem I read,

the one that fell out of my old yellowed

journal I just happened to be leafing

through, written when you and I were still green

and full of all that fairy tale crap. Come on, let’s be honest:

You and I both know that honesty

was never your best subject and all our life’s a fallacy.

Thinking of it now I still turn a little green–

it makes me sick—your face never once reddened

with shame. You didn’t even have the decency to leave,

just hid, all those years, behind your lies. You yellow

coward, afraid to face yourself, you yelled

at me instead, ripped my mind to shreds. Honestly,

you are ridiculous. Your face when I left

was Priceless. But that happy ending didn’t happen in the Fall;

No, it was in the Spring, the world at the ready,

birds chirping and the trees just turning green.

In Boston, in October, all the green

fades and falls. The trees put on yellow

dresses and gold necklaces, dye their hair red

and dance with the wind, who, in all honesty,

only wants to see them naked, their fallen

garments in parched brown piles at their feet. Leaves

might stay green in fairy tales, but we’re more honest

than that in Boston: yellow trees just mean the hours are falling

into dark white Winter, when frozen red faces will be the only colors left.