Dream: The Leaves

Martin Langford

A dream of running barefoot

through the leaves.

A park in Australia—an old one:

colonial trees.

Haring through seas of gold crinkle—

shin-high but bone-dry and frail—

scattering tales and opinions:

hills I would die on

and milder assertions—

arguments, hunches, beliefs.

Like a kid on the last day of school—

out go the chores, and the textbooks,

out go the pledges—

the daydreams that underwrite plans—

swooshing away

through a golden and dull brown

and scarlet-and-brown sea of gleam.

Harder and faster—

an ocean of autumn,

a loose scrunch of skeletal sighs—

till I’m leaf-sized myself:

skinny as petioles,

skinnier still

as the lacework of vein on the leaf—

puffing through half-light and shadow,

into the welcome of earth

with its frasses and crumble,

into the silence, the darkness—

the sweet damp of loam.

MARTIN LANGFORD has published eight books of poetry, the most recent of which is The Boy from the War Veteran’s Home (Puncher and Wattmann, 2022). He is co-editor (with J Beveridge, J Johnson and D Musgrave) of Contemporary Australian Poetry (2016).