Which Season: Summer or Fall?

"When the leaves fall upwards to the trees" *
Trees Cannot Name the Seasons
Trees cannot name the seasons
Nor flowers tell the time.
But when the sun shines
And they are charged with light,
They take a day-long breath.
What we call "night"
Is their soft exhalation.

And when joints creak yet again
And the dead skin of leaves falls,
Trees don't complain
Nor mourn the passing of hours.
What we call "winter"
Is simply hibernation.

And as continuation
comes to them as no surprise
They feel no need
To divide and itemize.
Nature has never needed reasons
For flowers to tell the time
Or trees put a name to the seasons.

~by Roger McGough

[This poem can be found in McGough's
book Melting into the Foreground, 1986]

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* [Photograph caption is a line borrowed
from the title poem of Adrian Henri's
book Tonight At Noon, 1969]