Once you step in, begin to walk,
time dissolves,

something takes you from your place
in the world—
what you imagine your place to be—

into a space of evaporated time,
of disappeared place,
barely embodied, only your feet
treading the circuitous
path in,

shedding what is no longer
needed, knowing you can pick it
up again, if you wish.

But by the time your feet find
their way into center,
you no longer wish to do
anything

but gather leaves the color
of new lemons the trees have
released, and

arrange the earthly ephemera
into a pattern that that will soon
vanish with breeze
or machine.

You will carry only the color
and circumference of the leaf wreath
with you,
tracing the same path back out.

The return never looks the same
because you are not the same:

Every walk changes you,
leaves you lighter,
always,

shifted, somehow, this time
by the path
through ripe yellow that looks
good enough to eat,
that might, you imagine,

taste tart
on the tongue.