Field Guides

A woman stands outside the hospital
with a plastic bag, collecting fallen red leaves.
I wonder how she will use them.
For children’s art projects? To make a wreath?
To press between the pages of books?

If for books, I would like to be there
when they are opened, novels become
field guides. Here between pages five and six,
the American mountain ash: a full branch a bookmark,
and an orange berry pressed into the page
where something has smeared. The word
must have been “cruel,” or perhaps “crucial.”

The eastern redcedar: the pith carefully sliced
with a pocketknife. The center
is called heartwood. Light red in color.
The scent is legible still.
Common winterberry holly: the edges of the leaves
sharp saw-teeth, the red berries once poisonous.
They still may be: the pages above and below
permanently stained, the words unsafe to read.

In the table of contents,
sugar maple: on this one, the color becomes
gradually redder towards the center,
the edges yellow-to-orange.
As if the fingerprint’s pressure
had dried into the leaves.