A leaf
that fell each season as mine
that sprouted and died into life each time

Under a scorching summerÂ’s sun,
maple and crimson
waxing flaps curl around their stems,
snap and drip to the ground
our colors spread abound

Not a moment stands
as if lapping waters
cease to sway
when before and again,
under a cold white paste
A shadow hangs on the bough
And a green sprout pokes through
a reaperÂ’s cloak

A spotted virgin conceived in three-fourths time
A seedling aged as the elder bristle comb

Without witness to scraped and smothered bark- or piling leaves
Forming flesh and wrinkled fingers

It is human condition:
Life lived in perpetuity of visible division
Not gradation or time transcending

09/17/2003

Author's Note: Originally the speaker was clearly a woman recognizing her inability to be complete in nature. The first stanza relates this idea of birth and death in nature and in human form by juxtaposing a woman’s menstrual cycle to the fall and spring of leaves (“a leaf that fell each season as mine…our colors spread abound”). But following the opening stanza the poem propels to reveal an even greater idea. Which is that nature knows no time, and it has been humankind that has propagated artificial measurements throughout. Seemingly ambiguous upon first read, the themes make themselves evident after closer look. “Not a moment stands as if lapping waters cease to sway”- although we wish we could make time stand still as seen through our attempts at preservation in art (especially poetry) and other such endeavors no such possibility exists. For in nature, our favorite oxymoron and trite epigram reigns supreme: “the only constant is change.” Which is by way of man’s very inert behavior and thought, the hardest lesson learned- a lesson and experience continually played out through all of life. The poem reaches its climatic culmination though, in the last two stanzas by revealing an aspect of human nature. For people cannot see the leaves change color or ourselves age (as noted in the lines: “without witness to scraped and smothered bark…”) we are forced to live “in visible division.” The human species’ ultimate success has rested on this ability to discern, to differentiate, to place the measurement of time, (hence the reasoning for the poem’s title). The concept of time is toyed with throughout. In the lines: “a spotted virgin conceived in three-fourths time…) shows that outside of man made constructs only gradation exists, without the in-between of age or space… This notion places a reoccurring Aristotelian dilemma at the forefront, in regards to actuality and potentiality: how do we stay the same people throughout? How is an individual’s essence preserved from birth until adulthood…to death? Again this question is battled in the nature v. man duality: nature is “gradation and time transcending” whereas we are “life lived in perpetuity of visible division”—the line was originally “life lived in perpetuity of oceanic moors” (as in the split moments which ebb and flow into and out of one another thus relating back to the previous line referencing water). I ask: should it be changed back or is it too much of a stretch? Finally, the poem leaves us questioning how humankind became removed from the original environment in the first place…for if we emerged (evolved) out of this environment than how is it that we do not feel apart of it anymore? How can it be that our bodies leak the marks of nature, but our waking consciousnesses create the divide?

Posted on 09/17/2003
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