Leaves Crunch

[Lizzie]

Hello Todd. Good to see you posting.  

I like the title -- in light of the poem, it's like bones crunching.

yellow wood -- like sallow skin or aging paper
frost-kissed -- grey, wilted
barren trees -- leaves fallen, but they're still around -- lying on the ground to be smashed underfoot or strewn about by the wind -- trees stripped naked of possessions, ability to photosynthesize
hands reaching -- branches reaching up, I presume. Calls to mind arthritis, maybe.
no longer time -- notes the season change and perhaps the waning light, but then also the finite nature of individual life cycles. This is a good kind of ambiguity -- however you interpret it, things make sense.
for green steps -- love these last two lines -- places a person in the scene, although I suppose the title does that as well
leaves sting 
wind-whipped -- good sensory image of the wind blowing so hard that the leaves sting when they hit the skin
on this trail -- the wind and the trail provide a dynamic element to the poem, and trail imagery calls up clearly notions of the life's journey
of dying -- good line break
blossoms

The ending image of blossoms is the only one that doesn't fit for me. The rest are tree images, and while trees blossom, they do so in the spring and the rest of the images are winter/fall. If blossoms are dying on the trail (flowers and such) that takes me away from the tree focus.

Very dense, rich write.