THE FLIGHT OF LEAVES
There is something to be read
In the flight of leaves in fall,
Each one just a word
In its own autumnal language
Though we never say what we intend;
How when we parted after months
Like water from tap to sink
I could see it spill forth from his face.
I stopped him with roll of my eyes.
We promoted him there in the sand;
Blood stripes driven with fist to bone.
He died shortly there after
In like manner so seemingly pedestrian,
It never warrants more than mention
From the anchor man's five o'clock mouth.
What we would have never said,
He told me how he never knew
His father, in too few grown too many
Words how his mother became both.
And what was never aired
Like clean linen on clothes line
As I became her stand in/stunt double But he is dead and I am both back
& never left.
Who can interpret what they leave behind?
T
hey say radio waves never die, just ripple Out into space, their signal
growing Inaudible as this flight of leaves to ground.
by Richard K. Ostrander