The last defiance

One last red tree cuts like a wound
across the grays of a chilly afternoon;
her beauty, here, a brash defiance
against what begrudges this bright smear,
this last flash of passion’s flames.
Why does she try, it sneers: when she
will be stripped, like all the rest—
in deep winter all the sticks are bare
and only memory of what was, exists.
Suddenly the scene and focus shift:
I recall those people I used to know,
whose hearts are strangers to me now.
Their beauty, now stripped of context
remains a bright brash defiance smeared
where only dim memory of what was, exists.

November 2019