A LEAF
A LEAF
by Randall Nicholas
There is one leaf on the tree
where before there were thousands.
I think it is stuck,
not heroically hanging on
but having been blown off another tree
and been caught,
and will stay there,
waggling at me all Winter,
rain-drenched, frost-bitten, snow-covered,
spore-specked at last till pushed off
by the next generation.
I like that. I like the idea of a dead leaf
impaled on a tree not its own
posing as a real leaf. It is a statement
of what I am.
Very observant poem. Reminds me of a line in a Tom Waits song. Forget which one. I like reading poems that are “look out the window right now” relevant and timely.
h&h me too. drill sargent stuff, you know, not in the prototypical way like how i’d freak out at boot camp. but look around you at everything, it’s all us, trying to tell each other stories of how it all goes.
this poem reminds me of this brown spider that was on my houses back storm door all summer and beginning of september. she was so placid, probably sleeping most of the time. my family would watch her thread some pretty gossamer shi-t around things bigger than her in a daze, like advanced science class. when she dissapeared one day i was really sad she didn’t come back. i should’ve wiped off her web remnants so bugs didn’t get caught without purpose but i loved her. shiva talked i guess.
a few weeks before halloween i put a glow-in-the-dark sticky on the door of a spooky spider where she was, in her memory, like i would with a leaf i’d be observant of.