Bags of Golden Treasure

Did they not...know,

     they, who put them so

           in bags beside the chipping wall,

Did they not understand

     the golden treasure

           gathered there

                in the height of Fall?

Had they not crunched them

     underfoot when young,

           nor built them into heaping mounds,

                 nor lain upon them

                      'neath the sky

                            with no songs unsung?

Did they find them useless, then,

    no treasure layered there,

          a clutter to be cleared away

                 so the ground might lie quite bare?

Had they never watched a leaf

    as though the only one,

         sifting in its weaving dance,

               on Autumn breezes spun,

                    and finding in that...connection

                        with it in that way

                             known by kids and poets

                                    on an October day?

Did they not know the value

     of the gold which they had bagged,

         still fresh with all its colors,

                its form still new, unsagged?

Had they never twirled a stem

    to make it pirouette,

         a mapled ballerina,

                skirted in the best gold yet?

Or ever pressed a trove of them

    in the pages of some book

         to keep them flatly glorious

                for an unknown future look?

Ah, to view such treasure,

     so bagged as worthless trash,

         could they not wait a little

               until the gold was ash,

                  until all crisply browned

                      and tattered like some men;

Could they not wait...could they not

     wait...until then?

Jo Anzalone 6-12-2007

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