Katherine Holmes

On a day when a maple leaf is really a flower

Last walk in harpstring hues
tousled by the yellowing
palms of trees. The day
borrowed from August.

In other chameleon trees, fire
supplies mood but not the balm.
I gasp too at fall's rude turmoil,
at petals imploding as dresses do
delineating legs above pumps.
Some bloom backwards, stuck on a
perverse carousel around houses,
papery-soft like windows with tissues.
Squashed are most. Appallingly
their mauves are trampled, tossed.
Striped petunias put up a
frilled front, looking unruined.

I pass a huge sidewalk blossom.
A flamingo flower strung in
pink from the sky. Billowed
as poppymallow, silky as
tiger lily, maple leaf?

I picked the leaf, passed
the foundering flowers. Picked
a laugh bluffing about maples
and meanings. What's in flower?
What's dying flame? What
isn't borrowed?

Next day I check the maple flower
between leaves of an unborrowed
book. It has flared, crinkled
to its capillaries, gauntly as
an octogenarian's face. Today
fall fell chill. This is a leaf

the shape of a sunstorm
on a fruit-red star
the flamboyance of a maple
defying definition to the death