A Single Leaf

Watch as a single leaf flutters down
From a late autumn tree
After it has changed colors

Listen, put your ear to the ground
Time is coming again
In the form of a train
A steady rolling force
Making no stops…

Against the crisp November sky
The tree may appear barren, but
There is still beauty
There is still the vision
The sun still illuminates branches
Branches swaying gracefully in the breeze
Branches that hold families together

Dancing, changing direction
Zig-zagging like a willowy feline
Playing “catch me if you can”
The leaf approaches the ground
A foot away it strikes your headstone
Blows harmlessly to the side
And joins thousands of other single leaves
Most brown, lives of beauty that have run their course
Some with remaining hues—lives cut prematurely

Examine the leaves
Xylem and Phloem no longer
Thousands of desiccated veins connected by the midrib—
These are the toils of life
These are the thousands of memories and fibers of our existence
Dry and brittle now
Once they flowed with passion, love, anger, fear, courage
On the tree they grew till they were
Part of something bigger
Something that loves so much it has to let us go
We fall to the Earth finally…

Among the living flowers
We cycle into the ground
And in a years’ time a sapling does grow
And he could swear—the leaves are the same in the spring
The colors—greens of life
And then, the late Autumn of life reveals Beauty again
And that is why I place flowers at Your grave