Leaves
Years do odd things to identity.
What does it mean to say
I am that child in the photograph
at Kishamish in 1935?
Might as well say I am the shadow
of a leaf of the acacia tree
felled seventy years ago
moving on the page the child reads.
Might as well say I am the words she read
or the words I wrote in other years,
flicker of shade and sunlight
as the wind moves through the leaves.
Copyright Credit: Copyright © 2018 by Ursula K. Le Guin. First appeared in SO FAR SO GOOD, published by Copper Canyon Press in 2018. Reprinted by permission of Ginger Clark Literary, LLC.