A Leaf’s Lament

I will be dead come morning. This I know well.

Do not cry, for I have grown used to the idea. I have slowly withered and changed and watched my friends do the same, falling and slipping away one by one. Tonight, it will be my turn. I can feel it in the night air. Death’s beckoning call.

Come, says he, the time is now right for you. Take your peace.

Peace. What a wonderful melody it makes upon the wind. Can you hear it? Tinkling just around the bend, over a hill perhaps, and carried to the four corners of the earth upon ever-changing currents. Here and there, it bends and swoops, promising its kiss to one while growing distracted by another. But it will not miss me this time. Oh no. Death has promised me that. And Death never breaks his promises.

Such an unyielding gust, that wind, rattling through the branches. Sent from the enemy, I shouldn’t wonder. And what a bitter enemy, too. I’ve heard whispers of his brutality, of the annihilations of generations past. And yet…a visitor weaved through in the spring; like a needle, it pierced us with tales of a more resilient abode with scores of generations still clinging to life.

It seems so long ago now…though not so long until morning. Will I see the first rays draw back the crisp night air and lighten the clouds as though my world has not changed forever? Or shall Death come while the owl still cries and the stars dance in formation to herald yet another season?

Ah, there! I feel it. Like a lightheaded dream. A warmer breeze rattles me until I feel myself slipping. It embraces me tightly until I break and feel my crumpled shell float away. For a moment, I hang suspended, hand-in-hand with Death and Peace, as we watch my old form ride the wind down to my comrades. Once young and green, it is now bright yellow and crisp. No less beautiful, I consider vainly.

We begin to drift up, greeted by vistas of red and orange and yellow, awash in the light of the full harvest moon. Yes. There is beauty in the ending of something, as surely as in its beginning; even in the ending of autumn, when all leaves must fall. And oh! the stories I could divulge…