Leaves by Lloyd Schwartz

                         1 

Every October it becomes important, no, necessary

to see the leaves turning, to be surrounded

by leaves turning; it's not just the symbolism,

to confront in the death of the year your death,

one blazing farewell appearance, though the irony 

isn't lost on you that nature is most seductive

when it's about to die, flaunting the dazzle of its 

incipient exit, an ending that at least so far 

the effects of human progress (pollution, acid rain)

have not yet frightened you enough to make you believe

is real; that is, you know this ending is a deception

because of course nature is always renewing itself—

        the trees don't die, they just pretend,

        go out in style, and return in style: a new style.

                        2 

Is it deliberate how far they make you go

especially if you live in the city to get far 

enough away from home to see not just trees 

but only trees? The boring highways, roadsigns, high 

speeds, 10-axle trucks passing you as if they were 

in an even greater hurry than you to look at leaves:

so you drive in terror for literal hours and it looks 

like rain, or snow, but it's probably just clouds

(too cloudy to see any color?) and you wonder, 

given the poverty of your memory, which road had the 

most color last year, but it doesn't matter since 

you're probably too late anyway, or too early—

        whichever road you take will be the wrong one

        and you've probably come all this way for nothing.

                        3 

You'll be driving along depressed when suddenly

a cloud will move and the sun will muscle through

and ignite the hills. It may not last. Probably

won't last. But for a moment the whole world

comes to. Wakes up. Proves it lives. It lives—

red, yellow, orange, brown, russet, ocher, vermilion,

gold. Flame and rust. Flame and rust, the permutations

of burning. You're on fire. Your eyes are on fire.

It won't last, you don't want it to last. You 

can't stand any more. But you don't want it to stop. 

It's what you've come for. It's what you'll

come back for. It won't stay with you, but you'll 

        remember that it felt like nothing else you've felt

        or something you've felt that also didn't last.

Copyright © 1992 by Lloyd Schwartz. From Goodnight, Gracie (The University of Chicago Press, 1992). Appears courtesy of the author.