The other day I was strolling through the forest, enjoying a slight breeze and watching the leaves fall.

     I began to see this annual phenomenon in a way I hadn’t before.  Instead of viewing a tree as  losing its leaves, I began to focus on the leaves themselves.  I watched as a leaf ‘let go’ of  the tree that had given it life, from which it had emerged last spring. 

     Since the spring, this leaf had spent its life nourishing that tree–capturing sunlight, converting it to food, and sending it back into the tree.  Along with its thousands of counterparts, the leaf had provided the tree with the food it needs to sustain it through the winter months. 

     Its work now complete, the leaf was no longer receiving chlorophyll from the tree.  The leaf’s green color had disappeared, revealing underneath the autumnal hue of death. 

     Dried and shriveled, the leaf separates from the tree and slowly drifts into the unknown.  And so the leaf falls, taken by gravity, and perhaps diverted a little by a breeze, to its resting place on the forest floor. 

     And there, as the spent leaf slowly decays, it adds life to the soil.–April Moore  

   

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 11:27 am and is filed under Celebrating our beautiful Earth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.