A Red Leaf
No one nearby to think me peculiar,
the street empty, nobody coming or going
to observe an old man who is folding
his dignity, collapsing it, top down,
to first squat on the sidewalk, and then,
using his arms for support, pushing out
one leg, then the other, heels scuffing,
to sit down for a few minutes, legs open,
a V at the center of which a red leaf
from a crabapple tree has been dropped
on its shadow, one of hundreds of leaves
overflowing the chipped brim of one tree
on a fine day for a walk through the last
of September, this leaf like none other,
having its own flaws, a torn edge, little
black spots, yellows, greens, even grays
only partly diffused in that one leaf’s
interpretation of crabapple red,
a tart color to look at, and to look into,
and to be happy about for as long as
I wished to sit with it, out in the light.
Ted Kooser, now 83 years of age, is a former U S Poet Laureate, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and the founding editor of American Life in Poetry, with more than four million readers at the time he retired. Read more.