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...with a dusty gust, the wind shakes the willow.
Only a few straggling hangers-on remain at the very top,
as if their predestined demise was apt to ever stop
and the warriors of autumn might give them reprieve
and in an act of pity or mercy give them leave
to linger into a merciless winter of icy rain and swirling snow--
shivering, desolate, in the time when untamed zephyrs blow,
a few scraggly willow blades, what does it matter--
solitary, unaccompanied, all their kind long battered
and flung to the ground to decompose and to compose
a sonnet or a villanelle to the cycle of eternal repose.
The north wind's unrelenting force will blow, and...





Poetry by William Hughes The PoetBay support member heart!
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Written on 2025-11-11 at 17:08

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Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
Well done!
2025-11-11


Griffonner The PoetBay support member heart!
Yes! A super meditation on the cycle of life and death using the metaphor of the Willow tree's 'hangers-on'. That it has no end, is prophetic to say the least. Blessings, Allen
2025-11-11