The Sound

Today the sound of rain is over my head, in the leaves.
For a month it will get more and more silent

As the canopy thins, even as each drop more directly
hits its mark it will be more and more like a whisper

of something going away, until the level of leaf is ground
and then in the first cold rain a new sound like a cough

rattling to life instead of death, louder and colder will
arise from the earth, for a few times anyway reminding

us that nothing not even death stops talking until the
first snowflake tells it utterly and quietly to shut up.