Everyone’s Talking Your Walking Away

Everything is change, he said, and everything is connected. Also everything returns, but what returns is not what went away. // We watched you walk away.

It’s like someone kicked a pile of leaves.

Until then, the leaves were mostly still,

Maybe a few picked off by the breeze.

But you walked away, right through the leaves,

And they tossed up a small commotion,

Which called attention to your walking.

As they tossed, anyone could read them.

Some did. That was around the eclipse.

When the leaves flew up, every small tear

Acted as a pinhole camera,

All those shadows pierced by crescent suns,

The shape of you inverted in them.

Every fallen leaf had always told

A story of its own of the sun,

Now a refracted story of you,

You walking up, you walking away,

But most of them of you walking through.

Someone’s out there now, picking them up,

One by one, strange person, studying

Each pinhole, thinking, nothing returns.

Similar things change similar ways.