Asheville triptych
The sky spends the early morning in the valley, nestled below the blue, billion-year-old peaks. When the clouds lift, they leave behind a city.
2
The dogs are endlessly at play. One is brown, one white. They pounce and roll, they tear after each other, they bare their teeth. The play is fierce but it is play. They bow and snort to say they mean no harm.
When they tire, they look together toward the valley. When they tire, they tilt their snouts together toward the breeze.
3
A pin oak surveys it all, skirted with dead, brown leaves. These leaves will remain through the winter, at the base of the branches, rough and windswept and dry.
Marcescence: a shape of thought. Not all let go, not all given to the revel of gold and crimson, not all gone in the great unburdening of leaves. The time for that has passed. Some things must be kept close, retained for months, for some unknown purpose. The tree will seem wilder for it, more hardscrabble and suffering. Yet they will serve some purpose, the kept dead leaves. They clatter like burnt parchment in the bitter wind.
ben tapeworm