Poem: BEAUTY BEFORE DEATH

The Danube River, Hungary, October 2009

Beauty Before Death


Cheryl L. Daytec


Trees dance with colors like discotheque lights

through mists of white descending from the heavens

The light about to travel to another world hesitates,

begs for more time to kiss the vivid autumn shades

like a thirsty traveler who cannot drink enough from

the spring of sweet water in the heart of the desert

But it must go and its farewell walk alters the landscape

Into another dazzling form that holds my gaze

There is an orange fire in the sky, that seems to herald

A gaiety of every form blessed with magnificence

But tomorrow, the leaves cleaving to the proud twigs

Will tumble stupefied on expectant dull earth

Multihued petals will drop down on a pile of decay

In every corner frozen branches and twigs will cling

To the trunks like the near-dead rejecting the grave

Trees will stand like ghosts too unhappy to haunt

For now let me stay mesmerized by the sight before me

With Mont Le Blanc ahead and Lake Geneva behind

Let me forget that this soul-entrancing beauty

Is a flamboyant prelude to the colors’ sad demise.

/october2007,switzerland



Visegrad, 2009