Dial a Poem

In a fleeting twilight span of harvest time:
Does the number of leaves falling off the exploding grey capillaries, outside the maroon brick hospital ever match the number of people falling out of life inside.

The leaves, like paratroopers squeezed into orange, brown, red and yellow jumpsuits, so tight their veins show through –grip the rip-cord with their flickering stem as the last of their chlorophyl leaves them. They nosedive and pirouette in soft twilight slow-motion into the grey under they had been hanging above.

In that brief from-tree-free-fall to the ground can a leaf think about what fate awaits it? Drifting down at a steady velocity to be raked into an anonymous pile, to be jumped on by kids and then bagged up in paper supermarket bags to be torched at the town dump. Maybe a lucky one or two will be caught before they drape the earth by the wide-eyed lover filled with newly freed endorphins, traipsing around their new chemical abolitionist's terrain and wanting to preserve a piece of autumn before they return to their area code.

The leaf might spend a few years pressed between page 232 and 233 of "Portnoy's Complaint", or better yet tacked to a college dorm room cork board as the seperated lovers catch up by phone. Another bunch of leaves might find their way into Martha Stewart’s craft bag and sit on a polished table under the hot lights and amongst the expensive flickering candles and cornucopias as the televisison cameras preserve the moment.

A renegade leaf, caught by a freak wind current, might float down to the river it had dreamnt about from its exploded grey capillary perch and softly touch down as it is soothed by the rhythm of the undulating current acting as its liquid hearse.
To be remembed: pressed between the pages of a favorite book, decoupaged onto the frame of a country house mirror, laminated into a bookmark, a prayer card: is this not what we all secretly want to happen when our fleeting twilight life leaves us?.