Thanks again all for your feedbacks.
Jackie, I agree that the sentence was a bit convoluted, but I couldn’t find a different way to put it and keep the meaning the same, in addition (no excuse this), I was under pressure of a deadline. My stuff is published in a local community paper, (circulation 3000!). Evidently there is not much competition for space in the journal.
I was just in time, and I made page 2 (of 12), my first single digit page placement. I haven’t quit my day job.
Here’s the whole thing. I welcome any comments.
PS - I seem to have a knack of bringing threads to a screeching halt, a propensity that is not deliberately cultivated. In addition to losing that talent, I vow to work harder to receive at least one vote in the next Hogwash.



A New York Moment

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven. -Rabindranath Tagore, (1861-1941)

One day I was full of life / My sap was rich and I was strong / From seed to tree I grew so tall
Through wind and rain I could not fall / But now my branches suffer / and my leaves don't offer / Poetry to men of song. -Beach Boys, (1961 - )


The leaves sang their colors in a million-voice choir.
Soon it was cold but the trees had no clothes.
Then leaves layered the new forest floor, in every color that brown, yellow and red could make. They made patterns immeasurablely more elaborate than a particular wonderwoods drawing. It is of astonishing intricacy, of a place too sacred to walk in. It is drawn in hair-fine ink black lines and ten earth-shade watercolors. When I bought it in Greenwich Village’s Washington Square Park, from the tiny, age-undeterminable, bug-eyed speed freak, the picture looked like Eden to me. Now my affection for it is because it reminds me that the treelands have received my lifelong, unbroken veneration.
The leaves’ colors do not define them as they did just the week before – but just their shapes – each more different from each other than snowflakes are reputed to be. These shapes are on a macro scale though. If my eyes were stronger, I could stoop down to zoom in on more detail, but now I use a loupe or magnifying glass. My eyes can open again, beaming through the glass, into a new clear, lavishly complex world.
Later, the luxuriant feathery needles of frost that fringe the boundaries of the leaves will be nearly as engaging as living things.
The artist looked into the lenses of my hazel eyes to see if I could love her picture.
Snow will cover it all.
– Owlbow (1950 - )

Edit: BTW I don't get paid, so unfortunately there are no royalties to share.