The woods was still dark, its trees bare,
the previous night’s rain having washed
to the ground the bits of what had remained.
The revelry was over, the morning sun
only now rising on the sleeping scene.
Except for her scarlet song rolling
down the hillside through the night’s debris,
I might have missed her altogether,
there, at the crest of the hill, her leaves alone
shining red in the morning light. She sang
not to call attention to herself, but as one
lost in a reverie, or uttering a last, personal
benediction over all that she had witnessed here
since spring, humbled, perhaps, at the realization
that she got to be the final witness of it all.
Imagine that. The last one.