listing off on my walk
the names of the trees
whose leaves are holding on
just a little too long –
what was golden now
giving way to brown,
tattered things that cling
complaining in the wind
there is an art, I think,
to holding on, to letting
go – and an impatience
for things which shouldn’t
but have lingered past
their welcome – strange
how we are perhaps more
enamored by the things
that rightly fall away
than by those that fight
another day to stay
© Sarah Whiteley
ebbtide 