Elizabeth Klise von Zerneck

We drove past late fall fields as flat and cold as sheets of tin and, in the distance, trees were tossed like coins against the sky. Stunned gold and bronze, oaks, maples stood in twos and threes: some copper bright, a few dull brown and, now and then, the shock of one so steeled with frost it glittered like a dime. The autumn boughs and blackened branches wore a somber gloss that whispered tails to me, not heads. I read memorial columns in their trunks; their leaves spelled UNUM, cent; and yours, the only head . . . in penny profile, Lincoln-like (one sleeve, one eye) but even it was turning tails as russet leaves lay spent across the trails.