The leaves my sister
told me to throw out
reminded me of books
I hadn’t read in years

but then I saw
that only the veins
matched the antique pages.
So much for spinning

some spiel about stories,
spices and sauces —
how almost everything fades,
dries out, flickers

into dirt and dustbins. Yet
to greet this morning
with such abundance —
how immense, how marvelous

to sit for a while
with obsolete leaves
and then to cast them
upon last year’s wreaths

decomposing
amid the scraps
of ordinary meals. What
a luxury, this space

to not need what’s at hand
and time to study it anyway —
a few final minutes
of not yet moving on.