Stippled Leaf, No Trout
It was underfoot, a stippled leaf.
I could imagine a trout’s flank, rosy scales.
Leaf-fall before snow in Michigan, before rot.
The fallen color underfoot, a riot of crimson.
Then burnt gold lying near the cottonwood, then broken bark.
Everywhere I stepped, I thought of her—
no longer able to drive, to walk alone.
A crew planted saplings, Tilia americana redmond.
I stopped counting at twenty-five, six.
I was imagining next summer, the leafing out.
Here stood each sapling dug in deep, with a circle
of mulch, a yellow label clasping a branch.
I went on trying out sentences in my mind,
I was trying out a landscape without her.
Under the linden trees where I will walk.
See, that is why sometimes a vandal breaks
a tree, snaps it in half as a cry—I get it now.
Not without my sister, not without her,
you will not grow up tall shading the field
where people come for a picnic, summer dusk.
It wasn’t a trout’s flank, not rose stippled across scales
but blood red spots on leaf and leaf, leaving mortal signs.
Patricia Clark is the author of O Lucky Day (Madville, 2025) and Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars. Read more.
Reprinted from The Canopy (2017, Terrapin Books)