EXIT INTERVIEW
We sit across this desk,
but outside the office window
stands a tree doing what all trees do
and have done, many times each October.
We have no way of knowing
if its limbs had grown weary, or what it heard
to signal that now was the time, or whether
there was any internal decision making
that brought about the arrival of this moment.
We just have a tree out there on a grey wednesday
co-operating, releasing yesterday’s
prolific profusions, allowing the only life it has
to be ordered by the ending of a season—willing
now to no longer be laden, willing
now to be latent.
We know this will keep happening every year,
which has never once been strange
for those living things who are always dying
and living and letting go.
Lance Odegard