THE VILLAGE POET
I imagined she—the woman— had read, reread them, and had now been ordered to start making the clean-sweep in prep for the penultimate move of her life. So, on this first Sunday of winter, she was dropping off books at the used-book shop.
Another, also still in the shop—a man, spotted something. With his cane, he pointed to “The Last Leaf,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, among her drop-offs. If the man bought it, I wonder who’d be telling him he did not need another book. And how would he feel?
Perhaps—like any of us as kids when being told on that day a stray kitten followed us home from school, “You take that right back where you found it.”
I had just put the car in reverse
to exit the shop’s parking lot when
across the windshield scudded
one tiny leaf. Heart-shaped.
Edged in red and yellow. Odd,
its center still held chlorophyll—
forming a smaller heart-shape
in green. Some fractal process,
I thought. Something to identify
later in the Audubon guide.
Thanks to the wafting breeze—
prompting the leaf’s descent.
Thanks to its soft-landing—
pausing me to see its venation,
before driving away and why-ing:
Why here? Why now? Why the hearts?
Thanks to watching the last leaf flutter
away (What else is a lone leaf to do?)—
a deeper type of awareness unclutches me
now for whatever may be the newest in you.
