Watching Blackbirds Turn to Ghosts

22 Rachel Eliza Griffiths 22 Tomoko and I talk a long time about the gestures of a falling leaf in autumn. On the antenna outside I watch a cloister of blackbirds who are so still they become the very shadows of blackbirds. “The falling leaf is universal,” she says at one point. We keep the leaf and its archetype suspended in the air a bit longer by talking slowly, in wonder, while admitting it’s consistently useless for us to pretend to be clever in our poems. I think of any leaf’s shadow going calmly to the street, beyond the street, beyond the syntax of rot. This morning I’d seen a woman twisted like paper at the bottom of a long bridge. “Everyone will always watch leaves fall in fall. Everyone will know this— what it means—the simplicity of the fall . . .” Watching Blackbirds Turn to Ghosts ...