A Leaf's Life

What a bummer.

My backside seems to be sticking to this cold, wet and very hard surface and I believe a big drop of water is running down my seam.  It's cold!

Just last week, I had a much better view.

I could see from home all the way over to the little restaurant and overhear the conversations on their patio.  On Friday and Saturday nights I could hear the music playing - lonely guitars playing the blues and occasional jazz trios to mix things every other weekend.

Looking back now, I had no idea that was the prime of my life.  I had everything.  There was a daily dosage of sucrose and water delivered right to me that made me strong and helped me get the most out of my time in the sun.

Yet, that was a tease.  It was the start of the finish - I didn't listen very closely, but I think it was six weeks ago when this old crow perched near the top of our tree and pontificated about how we would go from having it all to dust in the wind.

The whole thing makes me red-faced to tell the truth. 

It was pretty chilly around here when I tenderly stuck out a tiny tendril of green and watched as the blanketing shell of my bud fall to the ground.

I was on my own.  The bright sun and constant feedings meant I grew so fast I couldn't recognize my own shadow after just a few days.  Back then I was changing color a lot, too. 

Light green became a dark deep green.  My next door neighbors and friends around me were strong enough that only little drops of rain and dapples of sun reached the baby birds being raise in the nest on our branch.

Mom would leave us in charge for ten minutes each morning in the late spring while she went to find some grub for the little peepers.  That was so much fun.

Eventually, the babies weren't anymore and stretched their wings and flew off - eventually leaving mom and dad and a much too large nest.

Bikes and walkers passed underneath me at all hours of the day and night, but I was safely out of reach from the fingers of those teen-age boys that liked to pretend my friends were the bottom of a basketball net.  Some of those guys and gals didn't make it.

I saw them careen and flop onto the ground only to be blown away and never seen again.

The warm summer days meant more musical nights and days filled with laughter from the neighborhood center and the children who played there.

I can't hear the laughter clearly today.  Everything is kind of muffled and then echoes off the asphalt.

Right now, I wish I remembered more of what that crow said.  I liked the way he talked, it was lyrical and had it's own rhyme and rhythm.   There was a refrain too, I think that he kept returning to again and again.  A single word he told us before he cackled.

"Nevermore."

Oh, I get it.  Now.