Giving Up or Giving In or Letting Go?

 

Leaf Lives

We hung on so long, didn’t we?

Sinew stems clinging to our supports,

bark-bound life-lines feeding us,

phloem and xylem harmoniously pulsing

through our fine, filial veins.

Thus we lived, left alone together

we just hung about, blowing about,

susurrus our only soft speech

as warm fronts forced our faces to touch.

Remember when we bent toward the sun?

Then came the dryness, the heat of the summer

wilting our reach.

Tips of arthritic fingers

only able to curl in on ourselves,

neither of us could grasp the season to come.

Rumors of rain from trunk to treetop

spread…

Petrichor promises turned our bellies to the sky,

we swallowed the first drops of rain,

grateful and greedy for what cloud fortunes fell.

Some of us survived, revived by what rain came.

Others coiled, shriveled to crunchy shells;

empty of purpose they were freed,

collapsing and collecting

at the foot of our creation.

Our end is nearly here;

we will begin our next lives as nutrients

after we release, gathering together below.

I look to you to compare, to see,

Who will fall first?