“Falling Leaves”

spiraling down
a bunch of dry leaves
landed on the asphalt

if my car did not crush them
drivers behind me surely did

the warm early-fall breeze
was too laid-back to enable
those beauties of nature’s recent past
one more minute to last

you may ask

what’s in a few dry leaves?

a mere excuse for me to contemplate
my travels in less fortunate lands

in one of them, called Palestine,
i had seen frivolous mercilessness,
that which stems from us,
the supposedly humane human species
for whose hate-filled greed
the innocent was being crushed
under the fancy tools of modernity
eagerly crafted by none other
than our so-called humanity

i screamed in silence

“enough already! when, where do you stop?”

facing such sorrow,
even my lungs could not keep up
they abandoned me in my shout
thus they keep falling prematurely
one new-growth of a leaf at a time . . .

 

(c) hülya n. yılmaz, 10.1.2018