Raindrops on Leaves



On the parking lot behind my mother's nursing home,
former home of a workman's tools baron, arched over
by state champion trees, overnight rain beads fallen
leaves. I am readying a cache of jewellery to hock,
boxes of books to offload, to pay the mounded bills.

When Thanksgiving and Christmas come, as they must,
will mother know it? The stapled construction paper
marked with the day and month and the day's weather,
patients snapped gayly arrayed in hoky straw hats.
Raindrops jewel the fallen leaves on damp asphalt.

Christopher T. George