Turning Over an Old Leaf

A cottonwood leaf fell out of the writing tablet I am reassembling for a friend. It was on the ground on 14 October when I wrote in the park, sitting on the cold, dying grass looking up at the last clinging leaves spinning on their stems. I had just hung up with another friend, weariness from all the shoveling and pushing, and seeping, cold wetness from the thigh deep snow slowing my thoughts. It is still gold, and smells raisin sweet like it did that day 3 months ago. Preserved in the book instead of decomposing under the weight of the snow. It sits on my words, frayed edges throwing a short shadow on "detritus" "fucking" "clay" "cold" "fused" "New Zealand." The curving stem, firm and lifted swims over "green" "elevations" "quivering." What strikes me, while I can still articulate, is that the shape is a tree in itself, and the veins in the leaf another tree, branches curved up, receptive, like a menorah, the tree of life. The leaf reflects the tree and is the memory of the tree back to itself. Closer still, the veins are interconnected through a network of tiny red capillaries, like the flushed cheek of an aging man, and these capillaries, when you move tighter, are also in the shape of trees. It never ends.