The Thing About Leaves

They enter our lives in the spring

and greeted with great fanfare.

In the brilliant pastels of the season.

A promise of re-birth.

New life.

And better days ahead.

A reminder of the life cycle that we are all part of.

Spring leaves, heralding the arrival of

summer’s warmth and breeze.

We soon take the leaves for granted,

with the distraction of summer’s endless splendor,

even while seeking shelter in their shade.

Before we know it, summer fades into fall,

and we return our attention back to leaves,

who cry for attention with their vibrant cornucopia of color.

Our world is once again filled with color,

but a warmer palette to blanket us from the cold.

An echo of the distant spring from which they arrived.

And we embrace them with wide-open vigor.

But then one by one, they drop from their limbs.

And we mourn both their sudden absence,

but the oncoming dead of winter.

And then we rake and we rake

and we moan and we moan,

now seeing what was once so beautiful as a burden,

fallen from their heavenly loft,

as they lay in their mortal slumber on earth.

Only to be disposed of. And forgotten.

Something that was once so young…

…so comforting.

And so beautiful.