The Leaf Pile [indents not shown]

In the yard the autumn leaves are slowly 
losing the color of the golden season. 
They lie in little piles 
and the sunlight
the last before winter 
touches them and the resinous brown pine needles 
distilling 
the illusive half-hidden 
apple smell of autumn. 
Scholars say that the archencephalon, 
the old limbic brain, 
the nose-brain of our reptile past, 
hides in the depths of the skull vault 
and that sometimes 
touched or injured
it senses odors
from the night world of ten million centuries.
I think it is so now.
In the leaf pile I have seen secretly thrust forth
an indescribable muzzle.
I shall not investigate;
it is my own.
Smelling autumn I have resurrected
what has slept a long time.
Be quiet now--
let him hide in the sunlight and the leaves.
He breathes and suffles;
he has been a long time in the black dark,
scaled, snouted,
incalculably ugly.
Let him breathe
autumn;
he is part of myself. 
Through him has come
the sense of all these leaves;
he has rooted his way up
through dynasties of neocortex.
Let him breathe.
Let him savor the earth;
let him nuzzle the leaves.


--Loren Eiseley