Instructions From a Leaf on Dying: K.E. McCoy and Larry Hartford

Leaf, photography by Larry Hartford (USA) contemporary

​Instructions From a Leaf on Dying 

It’s easier than you think
and gentler.
Return your borrowed solidness
back from where it came,
unafraid.

Let your colours blaze 
with late-stage splendour,
then fade.
Hold nothing back.

Did you  forget, for a moment
that there was a time before
and a time after?

We are the brief in between.

Already, you have bridged yourself
across this time,
as you were tasked.
You have done well.

Arriving at this other side
implies no wrong turn.
We are seasonal beings
and forever is not
a season.

Assume a treetop view.

Loosen.
Loosen.
Let go.


Don’t
you

know
it’s

beauty

all
the

way

down?

K.E. McCoy

K.E. McCoy’s poetry has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal, Speckled Trout Review, Riverbed Review, Eunoia Review, Willows Wept Review and other outlets. She is a past Pushcart Prize nominee and second place winner of the 2023 Wisconsin People & Ideas Poetry Contest. She is the niece of the photographer whose art inspired this poem.

Larry Hartford has worked as a professional photographer for over 40 years. He currently lives on a 10 acre farm in the Skagit Valley of Washington and continues to create images.