That Single Leaf

That Single Leaf

That leaf, that single leaf,

 scarlet. 

Turning, in the first frost of winter

into what will become earth. 

Something that falls,

falls from on high to be grounded

Something that turns,

becomes pieces of itself.

Becomes dust. 

Something to be blown about by the wind again. 

Flying.

It is like this.

A single leaf,

scarlet. 

A baby wailing.   The wind its first call. 

It is like this. 

A single leaf,

turning.

It is like this.

A single leaf. 

There,

on the limb.  Quivering. 

Answering only to the moon. 

Pulled to land by the tides. 

Blind. 

The waves crash

and the undertow is violent in its pulling. 

There is just this. 

The scarlet heat. 

The yearning. 

The inner force we reject over and over again

because it is so terrifying to give in. 

To enter our bones and claim them. 

To become the oyster shell,

to become the sheer beauty of the opal shell. 

To feel it.  Our beauty.

 How fragile it is.

How perilous, the precarious beauty of this life. 

The brutality of it. 

The falling. 

Hitting the ground. 

Being ground into mulch.

Joining the earthworms below ground.

Eating into the flesh of it, of this,

our lives. 

The turning it over. 

Letting it all be nothing, and everything. 

There is only this. 

That leaf. 

The single leaf.

 Scarlet

Hot

Burning

There is the thirst

of being a nomad in the desert

There is the place where the mirage calls to us.

 Beckons. 

Calls us to drink the waters. 

And to it we travel. 

To the waters the eye cannot see. 

To the waters that quench the thirst.  

To the place where the red leaf falls,

 carried through the air by faith alone

and lands at our feet. 

Here, now

where we stand. 

There is only this. 

A single leaf,

scarlet. 

The color of the heart.

Suki 2006

Written years ago and still here with me today is that red leaf the color of the heart.

xo to one and all.

Suki