The One Bright Leaf

They, those people who know things
or at least profess to know things I do not,
they say it will be a less than post card autumn,
to much or too little rain, or some bit of evil voodoo,
what ever the reason, the leaves will be less bright,
less “ohhhh” and less “ahhhh.”

It won’t diminish the tourists, who made their plans
months, even years ago. They will come,
cluttering the roads and filling the hotels
and cruise the byways with the windows down,
so prepared for beauty that they will see it,
every bright tree magnified in their mind,
making the mountains, all of them,
more beautiful than us regulars, a bit jaded,
see.

That’s what it is, after all. Love. Desire. Belief
that a thing, a person is beautiful makes them so.
A phenomenon of nature, well documented,
and more than likely, the only way
I will become beautiful myself.
I am OK with that. With my ordinariness outside of love,
I am OK with it because I am loved by just enough
to be far more than I am, like that one leaf on a log
Almost bright, certainly beautiful,
that colors the season.

About this poem.

About Fall. This fall in particular which is predicted to be less than. About the effect of being in love, and how others see it, and how we feel it Poetry is never about one thing.

The photograph was taken in the nearby Hebron Nature Preserve.

Tom