The Leaves Returned

The Leaves Returned

By

R. M. Walters

Ex nihile nihilfit: from nothing, nothing is 

made. Yet how is it that a leaf, which has no 

imagination of its own, can crawl an extraordinary 

course through the mother tree once each spring and 

burst from the end of a flimsy stem to fulfill a 

perennial circumstance?  Though each year it is the 

same, though it is not the same, it must return to 

this something that is nothing from which it came. 

But as it falls from its lofty perch to that which 

Father’s the tree -- how then, the leaf to its 

nothing?

Survivors of summer’s conflagration -- Green yet! -- but dulling 

with ragged edges of morbid brown, impatient for icy blast. 

A job to be done!

Chill air eagerly surrounding waifs of knurled trunks -- then 

soft, crackling murmur -- warning of sudden, blazing beauty, 

yellow to crimson with resplendent splash. The job has begun!

Glorious luster! Brazen, harsh toned colors pungent with 

odor gently, wistfully floating toward earth, toward rest, 

toward end. The job is almost done!

Rusty emblems stay quiet, but restless -- flaking, wallowing 

in ooze, melting to ground, to dust, and at last returned. 

The job is done!