The Shapes of Leaves
by Arthur Sze
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.