WHAT THE LEAF TOLD ME
by Ronald Johnson
Today I saw the word written on the poplar leaves.
It was “dazzle.” The dazzle of the poplars.
As a leaf startles out
from an undifferentiated mass of foliage,
so the word did from a leaf—
A Mirage Of The Delicate Polyglot
inventing itself as cipher. But this, in shifts & gyrations,
grew in brightness, so bright
the massy poplars soon outshone the sun . . .
“My light—my dew—my breeze—my bloom.”
Reflections In A Wren’s Eye.