MICROCOSM
It had been a good life, from those early bloom days of Spring right through until today. It was a simple life too, one filled with simple pleasures.
The leaf could still remember that first day he had stretched out, from a tight bud into a frilly green entity full of potential. As the days grew warmer, he grew, slowly spreading out until he was complete.
He relished those early days when the soft pitter-patter of rain would splash off his surface and run down his fresh green face; when he would twist and stretch to catch the full embrace of the sun’s warming rays.
The summer was just as nice, resplendent in its heat, cooler night skies awash with stars. He would often wonder what it was like out there in the cold expanses of space, that intimidating nothingness that stretched on into infinity.
As the summer drew to a close and the nights became longer and colder, a sense of gloom descended upon the tree. The leaves knew that it would soon be time to fall and with the great fall came the end.
Some of the leaves did not want to prolong the inevitable. They were more content to flame out in iridescent bursts of red than slowly fade away. The lemon-limes were happy to ride it out a little longer, slowly easing into their eventual earthbound descent.
“What are you thinking?” they would ask the leaf? “When will your moment be?”
The leaf didn’t have the heart to tell them that he was afraid of what came next. He watched as the others floated down to the distant grasses below, scattering off into the unknown on the cool autumn winds.
He clung to that tree as long as he could, missing the other leaves, and even the birds who would often keep him company. He clung firmly to his roots, desperately adhering to the chance that he just might persevere.
He lasted until the first snowfall but the cold was just to much. He felt a soft pop as he separated from the tree and plummeted towards the icy earth below. He landed in the crunchy grass, jarred by the impact on his brittle frame. A sudden gust picked him up and sent him pirouetting for a moment before setting him down in a nearby puddle.
The water was cold, but soothing. The sense of floating was familiar, not unlike being aflutter in the wind, still affixed to his branch. That night, the leaf felt him self slowly drifting away into the fall as the water slowly covered him and turned to ice.
The following morning, surrounded by shattered fragments of ice, the leaf was perfectly preserved in a microcosm of the life that came before.
No comments:
Post a Comment