One Leaf

That is what you are, you know.
It’s not just a small, cute way
To say you’re like this or that—

The woods are a scrap of world,
A thin and ripped rag of lives
That are at the same time vast

And dark, dense with great, thick trunks
Gnarled on their deep mats of roots
That reach to worlds you can’t touch

Since you are one of the leaves
And all you know is one life
Of the lives massed on each branch

Of each trunk of each root web
Of the great wood of thin rags
Caught on the stones of a world.