Your Sunday Poem

This exquisitely cunning poem is by Lia Purpura and was in the Oct 5 New Yorker. It reads and sounds in my head like a small, haunting melody on a piano, with each word and phrase striking a resonating note.  Try reading it three times, each time more slowly than the last just to relish the soft, exquisite cascade of words down to the last two.

First Leaf

That yellow
was a falling off,
a fall
for once I saw
coming --
it could
in its stillness
still be turned from,
it was not
yet ferocious,
its hold drew me,
was a shiny switchplate
in the otherwise dark,
rash, ongoing green,
a green so hungry
for light and air that
part gave up,
went alone,
chose to leave,
and by choosing
embellishment
got seen.