Night Souls

Phillip Brown

Twenty-four exposures.

Twenty-four frames
with twenty-four different
      views of leaves
I picked from the ground

in November, and on
      my way home.

Their twisted forms
compelled me
to gather them up from
the dry grass around the tree
where they lay
all awhisper, quivering
in the cold hours of morning—

they've been falling
for weeks now,
fluttering gracefully to the earth—
      shed wings—
becoming whorls and scrolls,
piled in crumpled heaps
like discarded newspapers.

I couldn't resist.

I took three of them home,
cupped carefully in my palms.

Here are the negatives,
composed on a light-table:
a poem with twenty-four words
      illuminated,
and every word, a tiny window
inviting closer inspection.

With black and white
      transposed,
these furled leaves seem foreign—
something otherworldly,
moonlit and strange:

arched spines, points
and tips, delicate spiders,
curved like bowls or shells
or umbrellas,
balanced exquisitely
on the sill.

Their souls appear
to rest outside themselves,
draped over their skeletal contours—

each leaf veined
      with silver lines, pale
      and thin as fishbones,

each leaf casting
      a shadow of light.

Twenty-four fallen leaves.

Twenty-four portraits
of ghosts.