I went for a run this morning,
The winter sky still dark,
The water of the lake steel gray
Encircled by the park.

Upon whose trail I ran today,
Her road of asphalt black,
And chased a memory in vain,
Knowing it shan’t come back.

But the chill morning wind I chased,
His mocking, whistling breeze,
His fingers searched me, bitter cold,
And rustled leaves on trees.

The promise of the Spring now gone,
Summer’s heat now forgot,
The new sweet scent now long dispersed,
The fruit now gone to rot.

Those leaves, once green, fell to the earth,
Borne on the drafty air.
With haste I raced back on the boughs
To set them in place there.

But crisp and brown and cracked and dead,
I trod them underfoot;
I left them on the road behind
As finished I my route.