The leaves

If the sky were green instead of blue its green would be the aspenleaves which have the same inlighted sweet intensity of tone and are the first to come in spring close followed by hickory ash hawthorn and the rest with butternut last Each has its own conception of green some yellow some blue some like the rockmaple reddish nor is any leaf precisely like any other Their tide assaults the mountain by wasy of the gradual foothills Greening breakers lunge and snap at the heights counting the evenings forest by forest until the waves splash on the far high summit announcing the actual world in the heyday of the leaves. From "For You" (New Directions, 1970)