Not Oak

Oak leaves are the most intransigent corpses,
piling over ground, slathering roads,
a ply of tannin shield that holds
their dead selves undissolving, past the maple's
matting litter pulp, and grass-eaten coins
of the katsura, aspen, birch.

Maple too is nemesis to sewer drains.
But oak the all-weathering Saxon,
has the whole of fall and winter for its fain
dropping and clinging, such that on
oak leaves strewing, there resides a cohering air,
not much changed in colour from colour,

hardened without crumbling, no sunset blood
in them, such as maples lave in floods
that gives the raker some exchange. Not oak.
And so also its thousand-raining acorns.
And so its trunk and limbs - unending presence.