Gathering Leaves in Grade School

They were smooth ovals,

and some the shade of potatoes—

some had been moth-eaten

or spotted, the maples

were starched, and crackled

like campfire.

We put them under tracing paper

and rubbed our crayons

over them, X-raying

the spread of their bones

and black, veined catacombs.

We colored them green and brown

and orange, and

cut them out along the edges,

labeling them deciduous

or evergreen.

All day, in the stuffy air of the classroom,

with its cockeyed globe,

and nautical maps of ocean floors,

I watched those leaves

lost in their own worlds

flap on the pins of the bulletin boards:

without branches or roots,

or even a sky to hold on to.

Copyright Credit: Poem copyright © 2007 by Judith Harris, whose most recent collection of poems is The Bad Secret from Louisiana State University Press (2006). Appeared in the Literary Review, Spring 2009. Reprinted by permission of Judith Harris.