"Kicking the Leaves" - Donald Hall [ poet laureate ]

 Excerpt

{ 7th and final section }

Now I fall, now I leap and fall

to feel the leaves crush under my body,

to feel my body buoyant in the ocean

of leaves,

rocking like the ocean.

Oh, this delicious falling into the arms of

leaves,

into the soft laps of leaves!

Face down, I swim into the leaves, feathery,

breathing the acrid odor of maple,

swooping in long glides to the bottom

of October --

where the farm lies curled against winter,

and soup steams its breath of onion

and carrot

onto damp curtains and windows;

and past the windows

I see the tall bare maple trunks and branches,

the oak with its few brown weathery remnant

leaves,

and the spruce trees, holding their green.

Now I leap and fall, exultant, recovering

from death, on account of death,

in accord with the dead,

the smell and taste of leaves again,

and the pleasure, the only long pleasure,

of taking a place in the story of leaves!