It is often that I am entranced by the journey of a single leaf.
Once released from her tree topping branch, she seldom gets very far.
A couple of yards at worst.Â
A couple of miles at best.Â
She runs from the self that existed, the self that sucked life from her origin branch, and attempts to support herself.Â
She was not willing to hang in there anymore. She would leave the hanging to the others.Â
She wanted to fly before reaching the ground.Â
To fly she would have to borrow the wings of the wind. The wind liked to whisper, to all of the leaves and birds and other species that floated in its charge. Yet the wind’s whispers were unintelligible, a language the leaf didn’t quite understand.Â
She helplessly tried to translate, to turn her ear to the near silence of his words, yet she couldn’t understand.Â
She turned to the other leaves floating beside her. They might be able to translate for her. She tried to beckon the other leaves closer to her, and when that didn’t work, tried to move closer to them. Yet the wind wouldn’t deliver her to the other misplaced, escapee leaves. She couldn’t increase her speed nor change her direction nor angle herself so she might bump into another leaf. She was left alone, at the mercy of the wind, whose whispers she could not decipher.Â
Later on people called it a dance, what she did with the wind. She didn’t know what dancing was, but it felt as if the dance was erratic and unwelcome. The wind would gain speed and traction and lift her higher than she desired to go. The wind would also slow down to a near stop, and the leaf was scared she would be littered in a foreign place. She was floating without control, and she found that she missed her home.Â
The ground, like the branch and the air before it, becomes her third home.Â
She cracks and disappears beneath the topmost layer of soil. She is welcomed to another world, under the ones she had known. She became one with the faint dust of her beginning, and the meaning in that end couldn't be dug for because of how cold and hard the ground was. From dust unto dust, as He had promised.Â
On the ground, she found herself surrounded by the leaves of which she hoped to be close to in the sky. Yet these leaves were silenced by their death. She was swept into a pile in which she suffocated, trying to grasp her last breaths surrounded by the corpses of all those she had once wished to be close to. Her prayers had been answered, but in a cruel, cruel way.Â
She took her last breath, miles and miles away from her origin, and was delivered to eternal rest.Â
The grave kept her body down, but her soul crawled back home.Â
She no longer was ruled by the perils of her flesh, she no longer feared her own nakedness. In death, she could finally live beyond her body. She now felt as if she could dance with the world, despite not having a body that could do it. She was now eternally and intimately tied to the rhythm of the universe. She was part of its infinity. Its cycle of life and death. And with her last breath, she drew a new one: unburdened by the heaviness of life and enlivened by the glory of eternal rest.
I loved this beautiful little story. So many of these lovely leaves envelop my garden in the Fall. I have often wanted to dive into a pile and enjoy their warmth. Sometimes they form a shower and decide to settle over my flowers to take care of them. They form a red and orange blanket for me to enjoy. When they have shared their beauty they gradually disintegrate and enrich the earth so that it can support the growth of beautiful plants for the next year.