Poetry About Leaves

Leaves are the storytellers of the seasons, writing the biography of the year in color and shade. These poems explore the rhythm of the canopy - the way a thousand hands catch the rain, the sudden blaze of the October maples, and the final, graceful descent to the forest floor.

An individual leaf is a masterpiece of geometry and light. This collection celebrates their collective whispering in the breeze and their individual journey as they let go of the branch to become the foundations of the next spring.

Featured Poems

The Green Canopy

The cooling presence of summer foliage.

Millions of small fans cooling the fever of the day, straining the harsh sun until it reaches the ground as a liquid, dapple light.

They are the lungs of the world, breathing in the heavy grey and exhaling the cool blue that we take for granted with every step we take.

When the wind moves through them, it is the sound of the ocean stranded in the middle of a thirsty, inland town.

- Julian Thorne

The Art of Letting Go

The transition of autumn as a lesson in release.

There is no struggle in the way the maple turns its fire to the ground. It doesn't cling to the wood with a desperate, white knuckle.

It knows that to survive the heavy weight of the snow, it must first become light enough to fall and soft enough to stay.

We watch the golden descent and call it a death, but the tree calls it the only way to keep the promise of the root.

- Clara Holm

The Skeleton's Grace

The beauty of a leaf after the green has faded.

I found a leaf in the mud, stripped of its flesh and color, leaving behind a delicate lace of maps and nervous systems.

It showed me the architecture of a life spent drinking the light, a ghost of a summer that is still, in its propia way, completely and beautifully there.

- Silas Vance

Classic Voices

The Leaf and the Tree (Excerpt)

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1934)

A poignant reflection on the individual's relationship to the greater whole of nature.

When will you learn, my heart, that the leaf and the tree Are one? That the leaf will fall, and the tree will be?

Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Robert Frost (1923)

Perhaps the most famous poem about the transience of nature's beauty.

Nature’s first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.

Micro Verses

A leaf is the only thing that knows how to fall with style.

- Elias Thorne

Green is a verb long before it becomes a color.

- Anonymous

The forest floor is a library of fallen stories.

- Maren Grey

One leaf falling does not stop the tree from growing.

- Marcus Thorne

Deeper Explorations

Autumn Fire

The peak of the leaf's visual journey.

The Burning Bush

The hill is on fire with a heat you can't feel on the skin, but that warms the very spirit of the walking man.

- Elena Vance

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