by Charlie Brice
A Funeral Dance, Walloon Lake, October 2019
Wind hustles leaves alive,
their fall dance, a promenade
of aspen, oak, birch, and beech,
fickle flight through air to ground,
prodigies birthed by death.
Pines, spruce, cedar, and balsam—
wooded elders—watchful as
chaperones, nodding in the gale,
branches slap or clap approval
or angry judgment over
the forest floor blanketed by
a vermeil and umber chorus
where only silence sings and
waits for the soothing
comfort of snow.
About the photographer: Emily Sorensen is a DFA Candidate at the Yale School of Drama, where she earned an MFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism. When not in a zoom classroom, she likes to go outside and take pictures of pretty things. Mostly trees.
