The Pecan Trees

The last leaves have given up,
limbs laid bare as driftwood,
the gray of winter creeks.

The yard is littered with small branches,
broken fingers, crooked, cracked.
I never see them fall—never!—

but there they are, strewn
across the ashen grass,
the debris of abandoned resolutions.

Bent low to the earth,
I gather and clear them—
leaves, twigs, all the dead things

that have collected around me—
testaments to December’s end,
the prayers of another year.