I am thinking of you as I stoop to pick them up
two long willow leaves, dried together,
our last night alone in the empty house
coiled up rust-red from tip to stem,
your tanned back fitting the length of me,
both emptied of the living sap,
shadows of the summer we lived in these walls
resigned to the ebb of their season’s lot
as memory begins its affectionate work
in one final chapter of fragile form, held,
our night together on the palm of my hand,
a stripped bed blown with autumn willow leaves.