Leaves Are My Flowers Now – Carol Barnett

Composer: Carol Barnett

Text by: Michael Dennis Browne

Instrumentation: Soprano and piano

Duration: Approx. 4:30

Date Written:  2007

Composer’s note: 

Leaves Are My Flowers Now is one of two songs (along with The Blonde Assassin) written for the The Schubert Club Songbook, a project initiated by the American Composers Forum as a tribute to Bruce Carlson (1940-2006), the Schubert Club’s long-time executive director. Bruce was one of the first and most stalwart supporters of the Forum, freely sharing his expertise and office space.

Text:

Leaves are my flowers now.

Basswood and sumac,

their banners and flags,

aspen and oak,

their shreds, their ribbons, their rags

flutter and rattle.

Leaves are my flowers now.

Now is most fruit

shrunk to husk,

petal to small skull;

now are most things

gone from air,

now I see no dragonfly

out over water,

nor butterfly, with high sails

of yellow and black,

nor wasp, whom frosts

have silvered and slowed.

Now is light expert

among them, takes first

this pulse, then this one,

now shines a little

this surface, now

stains, now prescribes.

Clearer and clearer

the paths I pick.

Basswood and sumac,

their banners and flags,

aspen and oak,

their shreds, their ribbons, their rags

flutter and rattle.

September is almost over

and leaves are my flowers now.

Michael Dennis Browne

Used with the permission of the poet and Carnegie Mellon University Press.