Leaf
Published in
May 8, 2022
A brown leaf scraped at the window pane
just when I
had thought I had lost enough to cry.
Like a finger pointing it
signaled
over
to a spot on the ground full of the sun-spanked clover
I had been sitting in earlier
that very same day
hunting & hunting for a four-leafed one
I might save.
But never found. And the brush
of pain
overwhelmed whatever hope
entered my brain.
Until
some brown leaf screamed at my window
just when I
had given up on the lie.
(I wrote this in December 1978 at 552 Up Pulaski St. in Athens, GA. It was included in my booklet, Darkness and Other Poems [1990]. This version has a couple word changes and altered line breaks.)
