Another leaf falls

Another leaf is ready to fall from the tree. After having nurtured and fed the tree throughout its life, it is now letting go. Letting go because that is the nature of things. Letting go not because it cannot hold on any more. But because it has served its purpose. Does that sound very selfish - to be removed when one has served its purpose - or does it sound natural.

Anyway, we must not leave the leaf yet. It has dried off, and its veins stand out, ready to snap. It has turned a half-alive yellow and then a parched, dead, brown, as if the green blood has been drained out, meticulously, drop by drop. It curls inside, at its tip, warped by age. It hangs loosely with its head down, with the surrender apparent in its careless fluttering in the wind.

Then it comes, a stong gush of wind. The twig snaps, the leaf is carried up. It tumbles and flips and dances the dance of the free. Then as suddenly as the wind came alive, it dies. The leaf floats. It knows the ending fall has come, and it takes the fall with grace. Swishing through the blue sky and grey air, it falls in this rain-washed city of concrete and bricks.

It falls on a road of heartless black tar. A road of industry and of people who inhabit the world. A world, which must move on this road. And so it does. A flash, a roar, a swift flow of metal gushes past in the careless abandon of wanton youth. And what was once a leaf, a giver of life, is now crumpled dust.

Dust that will rise with the wind, and settle on new earth. Then she will make her magic once more, and what once was life, will be life again.

And so what passes with age, will come back with age again. As will February, next year and then the year after that. Only it will be a different leaf that will fall, anew. Till the end of time. Till the end of leaves.