Maria Hummel is the author of the novels Wilderness Run, Motherland, Still Lives, Lesson in Red, and Goldenseal (2024) and of House and Fire, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize in poetry. Her work was also featured in the 2012 Pushcart Prize anthology, and she was a finalist in Narrative’s Second Annual Poetry Contest. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry, Hummel is a professor at the University of Vermont and lives in Vermont with her husband and sons.

The Leaf in My Pocket and Other Poems

by Maria Hummel


The Leaf in My Pocket

                           will never
                                  fade   brittle
                             rip   or crumble
                     to its skeleton
                 of veins

                                  I cannot
                see its color


                if I think green
                     it must be green


                   red   red


                  *
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