The Leaf
a poem
A ghost like wisp turns the air, Thinning the temperature, Bringing antarctic cold and seasonal change. The leaves follow its charm Their colour fades, Distilling their vascular lines And emptying their veins. Greens dissolve to oranges, And oranges diffuse into cardboard brown, Crisp, crinkled, obstinate brown. Snap. Falling Falling Fallen Laying low Wrinkled and crumpled, The hollowed body. A skeletal shaken from its once verdant breath of life. Curled with arachnid death roll Now limp, stagnant, disfigured and lost, With rain and wet, free leaves lose their shape, Nature’s mortar and pestle. A congealed mess smeared into the soil, Trampled upon by foot without recourse. Earth to earth, Dust to dust. Not a sparrow falls, Not a spider’s linen, Is without Divine sight. “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
