A LEAF

A leaf fell from the tree at dawn
The one in my front yard.
I’m guessing it was exhausted
Months of hanging to it’s branch
Clinging to life, up so far.
Treading rain at times felt good,
Winds that raped it’s friends.
That leaf viewed habits of nature,
Blossoms and flowers through spring,
In it’s youth, fresh and small.
Feeling autumn come to make an end.
Had it been a good long year?
Enough that now a release would bring a fall.
To end a trees fullness and life
End a season of color in the world.
I watched it descend in surrender
No wind forced it’s end.
This huge red leaf just let go and fell down
I was sure this was the final stage.
For it had survived all it need.
A year and cycle for a leaf.

Then a child, small and fragile,
Walked across my front lawn
I do not know if she saw this leaf fall
But she knelt down with timid hands
And grasped that same one.
In her palm, that leaf sat still.
She gazed at it with perfection.
And I saw that in her few years of discovery
She had seen few things as beautiful.
Cupped in the hollow of her hands,
The leaf was carried to a book.
The first bible she had ever owned.
Placed in pink thin paper,
She pressed this leaf
Somewhere in the pages of John.

--Diva
as published in "A Diva's Forte" (Lulu Publishing)