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The Shapes of Leaves

Ginkgo, cottonwood, pin oak, sweet gum, tulip tree: 
our emotions resemble leaves and alive 
to their shapes we are nourished. 

Have you felt the expanse and contours of grief 
along the edges of a big Norway maple? 
Have you winced at the orange flare 

searing the curves of a curling dogwood? 
I have seen from the air logged islands, 
each with a network of branching gravel roads, 

and felt a moment of pure anger, aspen gold. 
I have seen sandhill cranes moving in an open field, 
a single white whooping crane in the flock. 

And I have traveled along the contours 
of leaves that have no name. Here 
where the air is wet and the light is cool, 

I feel what others are thinking and do not speak, 
I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple, 
I am living at the edge of a new leaf.

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