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A Small But Pleasant Light
We are playing poker for chips
that click against the glass table top,
or talking quietly and drinking beer
late into night, bottles lining up
on either side, like armies of captured pawns.
A pale green candle with a small flame
flickers and fills the porch
with a light scent of vanilla and pear.
The skeleton of a leaf is stuck
to the side of the candle,
somehow fixed flat to the wax,
the flesh gone, leaving
only the spiny stem and web of dried veins.
It looks real, even when held close to the eye,
this leaf. But how could they harvest
so many perfectly dead leaves?
I exhale breath that smokes in the cold,
and my wife asks me to remember Canada,
the photo of us holding each other and smiling,
our white breath captured in the air of Mont Royal,
a forest of leafless, snow-laden trees behind us.
A moth flitters in small clumsy circles
before landing on the candle and crawling
on top of the leaf, blending into its pattern.
The moth is hiding and resting,
or it might believe it has found a mate.
There is simply no way of knowing this leaf,
not without dragging your thumb across it
until its truth is revealed in the way it tears.
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