"I learned the seasons,
Which are all the tales of the world folded into flowers
And whispered with the drifting leaves."
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie...
"Spring and Fall," Gerard Manley Hopkins
Leafmeal
As oaks grow from the nutrients of fallen leaves, ideas grow from the words which fall on our minds. My poems have grown from the "leafmeal" of Hopkins, Wendell Berry, and the like. May these words grow a new thought, a new joy, perhaps even an oak of righteousness in you, dear reader.