Gary Young

Last night’s storm tore the star-shaped leaves from the maple, and the persimmon tree, already stripped of fruit, was left in a puddle of damp leaves. Sunset speared the bare limbs with shafts of orange light, which were there, then vanished.

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Beads of water hang from the leaves of the climbing fig, and a chickadee closes its beak over the heavy drops as if they were seeds. It’s mid-October, and the season’s last dahlias are small but ferocious. The nights will soon get even colder.

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The branches that I pruned from the white camellia weeks ago are in bloom. The withered limbs have somehow pushed out small, urgent blossoms from their brittle stems. We are cradled by impermanence, but who can resist one last breath?

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Gary Young’s most recent books are That’s What I Thought, winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award from Persea Books, and Taken to Heart: 70 Poems from the Chinese. Other books include Even So: New and Selected Poems; Pleasure; No Other Life, winner of the William Carlos Williams Award; Braver Deeds, winner of the Peregrine Smith Poetry Prize; The Dream of a Moral Life which won the James D. Phelan Award; and Hands. A new book, American Analects, will be released this summer. He teaches creative writing and directs the Cowell Press at UC Santa Cruz.