Green Season

Rolling into the school parking lot
a black hearse, rolling with flames

painted on the hood. Red flames
curling towards a sun-shocked

windshield, over the slow rolling
tires, flames the same red as the skin

of cherries. The fate of our flesh
is the brown leaves curling down

from the maples lining the sidewalk.
Over the leaves the slow tires

of the hearse roll, the hearse rolling
past the maples, past the boy

in headphones and green tattoos.
Over the campus strolling, flames

inked to his arms and curling
to his elbows. A fiery song

in his ears, for a boy with green
needled to his flesh a fiery song.

Remind us again we will be
young once, green in our blood

once. Tells us how soon flames
in our joints, the falling leaves

of our hair and our backs curling,
how soon our hearts are shocked,

our black hearse rolling slow,
the green bristling above our lids.