Chinese Chopsticks

Chinese chopsticks jumbled on the forest path,

pale ivory of ash leaf ribs scattered amongst the wet and black leaves.

A very few oak leaves have fallen and curl upwards like fingers through the thickening carpet .

Beech leaves are salt and pepper promiscuous, light and dark across everything .

The field maple leaf is defined and decorative, like a child’s pattern stenciled along the margins of the autumn path.

Prickled sprinkles of pine leaf, where a squirrel has been eating, are sharp and incongruous against the softening multi colored cloth of autumn beneath my feet.

There is the hallucinatory quality of dreams as the eye tries to register each outline,

And my feet move on ,

And the leaves fall around me,

Each by each.