Clean

By Jenny Rawlings

With its perfectly straight veins,

The leaf knows when to change,

That it cannot remain

On the tree to which it is chained.

As it falls, it forgets, the thin mist

Obscuring all but one important detail—

Knowledge, complicated, but beginning to untwist.

Drifting gently into the water, red turns pale;

Then it is gone.

Photo by Lara Deppe