A White Page

A White Page

A leaf rests on the white page in front of me.  It is the color of oxblood.  So red that my mouth can taste the iron and the ore that fed the soil, that fed the tree, that birthed this leaf.  The edges are not smooth, but rather fancy.  Not curved or scalloped like a shell, but cantilevered outward like the feathers on a bird when the wind ruffles through a wing.  I wonder what winds this leaf has known and if its edges were shaped not only by the winds of its brief life, but by the winds of its earliest ancestors.  The backside of the leaf is pale.  A whisper of the color of its front, yet significant in its mooring. The blood side is bold and rich and shouts, “Here I am!”  The back side soft and yielding.  It cares not that it is shielded from the eye or if its beauty is known. 

Resting again the pale page the shape of the leaf mimics the shape of it’s parent.  The stem beneath curls slightly to the left and holds the leaf as the trunk holds the tree.  I am struck by how completely and resolutely the leaf becomes the tree, the tree the leaf.   I wonder if it would be the same if I were to lie back against a white expanse of paper.  Would someone see that my edges were shaped by the winds of time and ancestry and that my colors are bold and not bold and that I am the beginning and the end of me, complete in my own right.  My own white page.

Suki Haseman

Revised 7/01/12