IMPRINTS OF LEAVES ON UNIVERSITY SIDEWALK

Grey cement reaching for miles
I dream of walking around in
An eternity.

I stop to see the imprint of a leaf.

The five pointed shape
With veins, stem like a backbone
Holes rotted through,
Cancer?
All preserved on a five foot square
Of grey cement,
Not an eighth inch deep, still,
An eternity.

Alexander is stopping a bunghole.

And it is fall again;
Students and leaves
Are as abundant
As they are meaningless.

What makes this one special?
O, I wish to be cast in cement next to it.

But I am no simple leaf.

And when my body is burned
And I am spread along the mountains,
Rugged Alaskan Mountains
Where there are no paths,
What imprint will I leave?

I’d write a book. I’d write ten thousand!
If they would just be
As ambitionless,
As eternal,
As this leaf.

One in a million
That walked one fall on these paths,
What imprint will I leave!