Autumn Leaves by Marilyn Chin

Autumn Leaves

by Marilyn Chin

The dead piled up, thick, fragrant, on the fire escape.

My mother ordered me again, and again, to sweep it clean.

All that blooms must fall. I learned this not from the Tao,

    but from high school biology.

Oh, the contradictions of having a broom and not a dustpan!

I swept the leaves down, down through the iron grille

and let the dead rain over the Wong family’s patio.

And it was Achilles Wong who completed the task.

    We called her:

The-one-who-cleared-away-another-family’s-autumn.

She blossomed, tall, benevolent, notwithstanding.

This is a great example of a perfect poem: there is a story, but it is cloaked in lyric elements and both the narrative and the lryical can be understood by any reader. And the story itself has layers. There is a lot going on in these 11 lines!

Even though the title tells us what we are reading about, those first few words are still startling: The dead piled up. The rest of that line could be the first image in a slasher movie. The relationship between the speaker and her mother is suggested here--the speaker must not be asked or told but ordered, and she must be ordered twice, to clear the leaves from the family's fire escape. That tells us they are living in an apartment.

"All that blooms must fall" is deep, right? Well, the speaker tells us she learned that in biology class (further proof she is a teen) rather than the Tao, a philosophy from China. Everything in a poem is, like here, important (or should be). The fact that the speaker tells us this means it is important. Another crack in the family dynamic, perhaps, which would not be uncommon for a family with a daughter born in another country but raised in the United States. In this case, the daughter was born in Hong Kong, but "you are too American" is not an atypical response for parents who have moved here from elsewhere to their kids.

Tao philosophy often uses contradictions to show how things we view as opposites are actually connected, but you don't need to know that to understand the next line. Is not having a dustpan an oversight? Or due to money being tight? Either way, the speaker sweeps, setting loose the leaves onto the patio of the family under them.

Chin grew up in Portland, OR, where it rains throughout autumn. It makes the leaves slippery and slimy. It also gives an extra layer of meaning to the wonderful image of the speaker letting

the dead rain over the Wong family’s patio.

This is not, however, a tale of two families warring over leaves--quite the opposite. In the last stanza we learn that a member of the Wong family, most likely a teen herself, "finished the task" and swept the leaves up and away.

 We called her:

The-one-who-cleared-away-another-family’s-autumn.

What a beautiful image! What a great appellation! The poem ends with almost a side note; we learn that Achilles Wong grew up to be tall and benevolent. These are interesting charactertistics to focus on--benevolent is fine, but tall? Odd, unless the speaker feels that not being tall is a failing. The last word, notwithstanding, besides being one of my favorite compound words, is a bit mysterious.

I like to think that it's referring back to what the speaker has told us about blossoming. After all, we are told that Achilles blossoms--this is not an unusual way of talking about growing up, although here it is also a call back. "All that blooms must fall" we have been told in the first stanza. Does the speaker know something about her neighbor? Is the poet hinting at something that will happen to Achilles in the future? "Fallen" is a loaded, albeit very old-fashioned, word when we use it for women and girls. Or is there tension between the two girls, and Achilles finishing the speaker's task is not actually a benevolent act but a case of "look at me! I am the good girl!" I am okay reading this in any of these ways--they all fit and none of them detract from my delight in this poem.

"Autumn Leaves" is from Marilyn Chin's 1994 book, The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty (Milkweed Editions, reissued in 2009).