November Morning

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.