Gathering Leaves in Grade School by Judith Harris : American Life in Poetry

The Poetry Foundation

Library of Congress

University of Nebraska
at Lincoln

American Life in Poetry: Column 183

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Perhaps you made paper leaves when you were in grade school. I did. But are our memories as richly detailed as these by Washington, D.C. poet, Judith Harris?

Gathering Leaves in Grade School

They were smooth ovals,

and some the shade of potatoes—

some had been moth-eaten

or spotted, the maples

were starched, and crackled

like campfire.

We put them under tracing paper

and rubbed our crayons

over them, X-raying

the spread of their bones

and black, veined catacombs.

We colored them green and brown

and orange, and

cut them out along the edges,

labeling them deciduous

or evergreen.

All day, in the stuffy air of the classroom,

with its cockeyed globe,

and nautical maps of ocean floors,

I watched those leaves

lost in their own worlds

flap on the pins of the bulletin boards:

without branches or roots,

or even a sky to hold on to.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by Judith Harris, whose most recent collection of poems is “The Bad Secret,” Louisiana State University Press, 2006. Reprinted from “The Literary Review,” Fall 2008, by permission of Judith Harris. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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