Sunday 29 September 2013

The Death of an Autumn Leaf

The wind had changed. It wasn't so sweet and warm anymore. Instead it had become colder and cutting, coarse and unforgiving. Sometimes warm days would come again, but day by day the autumn cold was getting nearer. The Leaf was no longer caressed by tender sunshine and sweet summer days. Instead it felt its life force diminish as the Sun no longer touched its green skin as tenderly and lovingly as it had done in the summer months.
The Leaf was starting to feel old and brittle. No longer was it young and green. It had become old, its younger days had passed. Its colours had turned to the most beautiful rainbow of yellow, orange and rusty, with some shades of green forgotten here and there. It knew that this was the exuberance of its impending death, the last glimmer of a setting sun. It was like it was putting on its most beautiful clothes preparing for its departure. 
As it sat there blown by the cold autumn wind, still linked through its drying stem to the Tree of Life, it couldn't help but reflect on the Great Emptiness. Above it, the big blue sky with an autumn crispness it had never seen before and yet so strangely familiar, of a divine beauty and yet so sad... 

The Leaf knew its end was near, but the big blue sky above it would continue to be, along with the bright shiny stars. How come it was sad and at the same time happy? There was a feeling of eternity in all this atmosphere, mixed with a feeling of ending, its end. What would happen to it? It would no longer be able to feel the warm Sun carressing it, nor the bright mornings with the Wind blowing through the trees and waking up all its brothers and sisters in the joyous frenzy of a sunrise, when all nature would be waking up. All that had passed... As it looked to the Earth knowing that that was where it was going to end up dying, it couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like - dying? It had seen some of its brothers and sisters fall from the Tree of Life and be blown gently away, and as they floated gently through the air and touched the ground there was an eery feeling - they weren't so different from a moment ago and yet something fundamental had changed about them. Their appearance hadn't changed, yet it could not feel their presence anymore. It knew it would never be able to speak to them again. It felt sad. There was no purpose in all this. Why should they die? Why should It die? Why was all beauty and happiness condemned to come to an end? It looked at its brothers and sisters on the ground remembering all the happy rustling of the spring and summer. But they were there no more, their decaying bodies the only remnants of their existence. Still, something strange was going on. It was like they were there but not in their rusty leaf bodies. It felt as if somehow they had become part of the Tree again... Surely this couldn't be... 

But as the Leaf was thinking about all this, a cold, dry wind started blowing. The distant Sun was shining its last rays from behind a grey cloud. The Leaf was scared, it wanted to hang onto the Tree, and gazed scared and sad to its dry stem, its last sap of Life. But even that had become a mere memory. The wind was picking up and It knew Its time had come. A gust of cold, cutting wind severed its link to the Tree of Life. Suddenly the Leaf felt the Wind no more. It was floating gently on its wings, as if it were a child gently swayed to sleep. As it was floating on the Wind, it couldn't help notice the silence. The rustling of the trees had become a faint sound somewhere in the distance. Half asleep, the Leaf felt as it was gently laid down by the Wind in the welcoming arms of the Great Mother - Earth. As it touched the ground, for a moment there was a flash, like a deja-vu, the same embrace of the Mother Earth, in which the Leaf was coming into existence. Now the Mother was embracing her whilst receiving It back. It was funny - death felt like nothing it had anticipated. Although it felt slowly dissolving into the arms of the Great Mother, it didn't feel lonely. Actually quite the opposite. It felt very much connected to all and everything. Its brothers and sisters whom it had weeped for as they had died before, were all here. Strange, this "here", but welcoming. If in the past it used to look at the Earth, the Great Mother, and glanced at the sky, the Great Father, being in this "here" felt as if both cosmic parents were united and it was within. How strange, and yet so eerily beautiful...

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The Sun was peeking through the morning clouds with a pink-orange shimmer, and a fresh morning breeze was waking up all the leaves. Birds were chirping their happy morning songs, as the whole forest was waking up. A young green leaf bud was also waking up. Its brothers and sisters were already singing their wake-up song as the wind was blowing through the trees and caressing their green bodies. The Leaf bud had had the strangest of dreams. It had dreamt about a clear blue sky, of a clarity it had never seen before, about a wind that was very different from the one it knew, and in this dream the wind had torn a Leaf from the Tree. The torn Leaf was much bigger than the leaf bud, and its colours... it had never seen such colours! As it was thinking about this Leaf blown away by the wind, it remembered feeling a strange familiarity with this Leaf it had never seen before... Well, it was only a dream, and now it was time for the beginning of a new day, as the Leaf bud was gently caressed by the Sun's warm embrace.