"Leaf by Leaf" by Rebecca Ziegler

"Leaf by Leaf"

Yesterday, at my feet,
an autumn leaf –
unique, breathtaking splendor:

flame-red, separated
from spirit-of-sun
by a jagged, glowing brown streak –

a Bradford pear leaf.
I nearly retrieved it
to press – to preserve its ghost.

But I thought again –
knew, in my scrapbook,
it would become its own pale shadow.

I passed there today
in a different mood,
gluttonously collecting glories

to press – a hint
of the season’s riches –
for ghosts are more than nothing –

my hands full of fragments
of the red-orange-gold shift –
individual segments of the spectrum

mottled, dappled,
streaked and various –
each leaf, uniquely marvelous.

But yesterday’s leaf
lay there no longer –
blown away, shredded, or faded.

When humans paint autumn,
they tend to impressionism,
laying on bright color in blurs,

or abstraction: color-fields
starkly juxtaposed,
barely discernable as foliage.

But God the Artist
(or Nature, or Whatever)
paints uniquely, leaf by leaf,

a radiance almost frightening –
so touched with splendor,
we soon look away, or generalize.

In despair of perceiving
their myriads, we snatch
at eternity, by painting or pressing.

God, unlike us,
craves no immortality.
God sees each leaf, then lets go.

"Strangeness" by Rebecca Zeigler

This rock was once at the bottom of the Sea
of Iapetus, says the geologist; it sounds so otherworldly,
so alien – another planet, or a realm of fantasy!

But the continents have no firm roots: they glide
about the surface of the Earth; they collide
to form new landmasses; they subdivide.

The seas of the Earth do not stay curled
in their own abysses; they come unfurled
to drown mountains. New trenches crack the world.

Here, just under my feet, lies strangeness.
No need to dream of alien worlds; this
rock, at hand, immensely old, records histories,

which, contemplated, make this, our own world, uncanny.
We’re not at home here; this fellow entity,
so familiar, so commonplace, embodies strange memory.

To this knowledge, one can only respond with awe.
Take your shoes from off your feet: you tread on something raw
with altering, metamorphosis – shaped by alien law.

-Rebecca Ziegler