"A Small Pile of Leaves" (2021)

Last week I received in the mail my five contributor copies of Touch the Donkey 29, published as always by the indefatigable rob mclennan, and including contributions (in order of appearance) by Bill Carty, Nina Vega-Westhoff, Robert Hogg, Sara Alcaide-Escue, Colby Clair Stolson, Elizabeth Robinson, Simina Banu and Tom Prime.

I contributed five poems to TtD 29 (they appear between Bill's and Nina's), the first of which, "A Small Pile of Leaves," contains lines longer than I thought and as such the last word or words of each line were cut off and tucked below. (These things happen.)

Here is the poem as I intended it:

A Small Pile of Leaves

 

 

author writes to reader of a tree from behind the tree the author writes

 

the reader no longer sees the tree only the author hiding behind it writing

 

the reader writes it is the reader huddled behind the tree carving R-E-A-D-E-R

 

into the tree with a pen-knife then a key that breaks at the end of R-E-A-D-

 

now inspired the author deletes the tree and writes of a huddled figure

 

crying over a small pile of leaves I placed there before I sat down to write

 

these lines hoping they might be discovered by someone out for a reading