Even Oaks

Forget what you have ever known
about the core of yourself;
that pithy center that has held  you up
through the stormy days and nights
of your life until now.

Forget what it meant to waste hours, minutes
wandering through the grief of rain
you carefully weighed
on scales that measured nothing
of the soul that inhabited the space
that slipped away like leaves
letting go on cold nights.

Even oaks eventually give up
and let copper and brown
fly and give way to the wind
that remembers everything
and is content to release the silent voice
of another season
turning the corner
where memory and love
first kissed.