Leaving
Each day, less leaves
in the tree outside my window.
More leave, and every day
more sky. More of the far,
and every night more stars.
Day after shortening day, more
day in my panes, more missing
in the branches, fewer places
for the birds to hide, their abandoned nests exposed.
And night after increasing night,
the disappearances multiply.
The leaves leap from fire
to colder fire,
from belonging to darker belonging,
from membership to ownership.
The growing absence
leaves no lack, nothing wanting,
and their gone outnumbers their going
through the door they leave ajar.
The poem I am looking at is “Leaving” by Li-Young Lee. This was an interesting poem that, at first glance, is a little unclear and the message is not obvious. What is clear, however, is that a majority of the poem is focused on nature, as the author mentions “leaves in the tree” outside his window, “more stars” every night, “fewer places for the birds to hide”, and how the “leaves leap from fire to colder fire”. The title “Leaving” has multiple meanings, as the majority of the poem seems to focus on leaves falling, and how they are leaving the tree, which I think was an intentional usage of double meaning.
The first stanza is the easiest to understand, as Lee describes how on the tree outside his window, more leaves are falling from the tree. This leaves more sky exposed, which allows him to see “more stars” every night. There is not much figurative language present in the first stanza, except for the parallel uses of the word “leave” to represent the leaves falling and how they were leaving the tree.
The second stanza is where things get more complex. The author describes the days shortening, which alludes to it being autumn. The fall season often alludes to death coming, as winter represents death. This can also be inferred because the leaves are falling from the trees outside the speaker’s window. The poem then takes a turn when the speaker describes how there are “fewer places for the birds to hide, their abandoned nests exposed.” The connotation of some of the words they used, such as saying the birds had fewer places to hide, or the words “abandoned” and “exposed” make it sounds like they are almost being hunted, as they can’t hide and they are exposed. And then this connotation only increases with it being said that “their disappearances multiply”, making it sound like whatever is hunting them got them.
The third stanza is an interesting one, as it is very metaphorical, and it is a little harder to understand. The first few lines talk about how the leaves “leap from fire to colder fire”, which I did not initially understand. I now believe that, since fire is a symbol that often symbolizes transformation or destruction, the leaves that are falling from the tree are transforming in some way. And, if the fire is becoming colder, or the leaves are going to a colder fire, the fire is less intense, so maybe the transformation is not as intense and is a more subtle transformation of some kind. The speaker then describes how the leaves transform from membership to ownership, which means that the trees used to be a part of a larger idea, in this case the tree, and then became individuals when they fell, or left, the tree. They became more independent. This realization was the initial clue that led me to believe the leaves are a metaphor that represents people leaving a country and moving to another country where there is more freedom and they can become more individualistic.
With that being said, the fourth stanza is very interesting as it could represent a few things. What I think it represents is the idea of being reminiscent of the old place that the person was, or in this case, where the leaf was: the tree. Leaving the door ajar could mean that the person is open to going back to where they were, as they are not closing the door or ending the idea on returning to their old place. Overall, I think this is a very interesting poem that took me a little while to figure out but when I did, it felt very satisfying.