Outside the Church Window by Suzanne Samuels

Outside the church window
Leaves tumble down
Softly as flurries

The leaves don’t know the season
Pale yellow against verdant green

Sunflowers unrelenting
Zucchini ripening
Coreopsis ever blooming 

Still they fall 
Death amidst abundance

Only the most insistent wind
Compels the cascade
In stillness, they cling

I wonder
Was that a trick of the eye?

If I had not seen it
Outside the church window
Then I would not have believed

The way they surrendered
Falling down

Though the sun is overhead
The clock hands at noon
And the threat of winter distant



Suzanne Samuels is at work on her historical novel, The Orphans' Wheel, set in Sicily and New York City at the turn of the twentieth century. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, among these, Cyclamens and Swords, Cactifur, and Snapdragon.