As a child,
I could not discern the correlation
between leaves laying on the ground
and the green fuzz that writhed and pulled
like my hair on a spring afternoon.
The trees’ jazz came
without the rhythm of the blades crunching under feet,
stones stumbling over each other,
or the bumblebees mumbling along suburban soundtrack.

A leaf, to me, was a creature of cruel earth;
its spine cracking and popping under worn tennis shoes
or crumbled between clumsy, pudgy digits.
It fought its way through soil,
toiled to reach the top,
unknowing that upon emergence
it would wither and die.

I imagined my life as a leaf;
this wondrous anomaly of the animal kingdom
that bore no eyes,
nor mouth,
nor ears to betray it.

I felt kinship to its struggled humble beginning
from magmatic mother
to the atmospheric birth and death of breath.
I felt its joints stretch and relax,
quake and steady
as it reared itself from its worm home womb.
I felt air rush into my lungs
as it sighed itself into the wind,
gliding free without wings.

I closed my eyes and felt the inevitable downfall,
like all things on this so-called green earth,
withering and dying.
Complete
and utterly untouched
and alone
so far away from its start
on the inside
to the outside
of home.

01/25/2006

Posted on 01/26/2006
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