Leaf Prints

The rain this morning is the thin kind that doesn't bother making a sound. By the bakery the sweeper's been through, and the leaves are gone, or mostly gone.

Each one left its outline in tannin, the colour of weak tea: the stem, the five points, a notch where something ate.

Nobody pressed them. They just lay flat and wet for a week and gave what was in them to the stone, a little at a time.

A man steps on a maple without looking. It doesn't mind. It'll be there till spring, fainter each week, the way the tea ring on my desk is fainter, and still a ring.