As I walk the yard, kicking the leaves, an annual mnemonic, a sonic line to follow, reawakens and leaves become old words and lines, thoughts and places. His voice is a sonorous baritone as he walks us through the seven sections of the poem, the sound of leaves becoming the story of leaves in his life’s seasons. And only a year before, I too was kicking the leaves on the Maine college campus where I was a senior finishing my B.A. The sound, the tree species, the smells of leaves augur the reflective life to come, the chain of memories associated with October, autumn and, in particular, leaves. I want her to have her own oak tree descended from mine.