Leaf,
you giddy-making brat,
you have me helter-skeltering
with you
to look into blue pools,
sip waters from the lip of a lake.
Stay; fall into my hand
and let me read you
with my mouth and tongue,
the bitter lines of your history,
the sgeulachd of your branch-home,
the longing of your limbs,
your roots-in-earth,
your rank upon rank of sister-trees,
the blueprint of the softwood
and broadleaf,
the clattering wind
in rook-abandoned heights,
the kiss of moss at the subtle cleft.
So much from
a single, lay-me-down leaf,
one moment borne up,
the next delve-drifted
past my fingers too fast, too fast!
So much there is in the way of you,
your bearing on the air,
your beating in my hand
like the heart of a finch,
your strangeness against my cheek –
enough,
let me be buried under you
and your kind, to lie,
to listen to the growing,
gathering silence.
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