The sky is pale on this cold November morning,
Jack Frost has visited overnight and the grass is fringed
with white.
I walk past the neighbor’s car, which has been hidden under
a white tarp
like a blanket or a birthday present.
Few cars drive on the road at 7:15 in the morning.
I can see my breath and pretend to be smoking a pipe
sending clouds of water vapor into the brittle air.
And I am astonished and captivated by a single brown leaf,
hanging precariously from a single thin maple branch.
I know that the only leaf left hanging will soon plummet to
join its peers
and join the brown heaps on the side of the road.
The deciduous angiosperm skeletons whose hard wood is bent
at random joints and angles stand and I see them shivering
along with me.
Its amazing how time flies
as the birds fly south.
I wonder what the leaf feels like as it watches the cars go
by
on the quiet road.
Soon it snow will come
and the brown heaps will disappear.
And the cycle will repeat as if time was reversed
and the leaves will grow again, green and beautiful and
strong.
And the leaves will return to the same trees
that they left so long ago.
