A New Leaf

Botanists, my fig leaf is chafing! Would you dream of spelling raspberry with two z’s, ensconced as you are among fronds, among ferns, pollinators, petals, pistils, having from timely perversity, like monks, like missionaries, dodged the human lot? Oh innocents, the leaf I’m after is longer, roomier, velvety, extending some way over the belly, indestructible, in case, as anticipated, we non-botanist types prove too industrious to die, yet removable at any moment, say this one, in Trenton, when looking up from my notepad I will declare, “Fellow members of the board of this venerable ice cream sandwich company, could it be that the very inferiority of our product, far from depriving us of our dreamed chalets and Chanels, is the lone source of its lingering appeal: the sweetest part escaping out the back while we bear down on the comparatively bitter and artificial externals, not to mention the speedy melting away, the resemblance, that is, to life? I must vote no to this invigorating and inexplicably sky-blue raspberry, spelled with the double-z’s of pizazz, or, perchance, of sleep. Now let us look one another in the human eyes, rather than these boardroom decoy eyes like those of fluttering pollinators warding off the beak, the snap, the treetop delectation.” Anyway, a leaf like that.