The Forest in November

The trees have given their notices.

All summer long they worked,

building green architecture,

housing birds and bees and light—

and now they file out quietly,

handing back their colors

like employees on their last day

leaving nothing but the skeleton

of what they meant to be.

The ground collects their offerings.

Mud and moss and silence.

Even the light comes sideways here,

like it too has somewhere else to be.

But I stay.

Because the forest in November

tells the truest story:

that letting go is also

a kind of growing.