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When is the autumn leaf no longer part of the tree?
When is the autumn leaf
no longer
part of the tree?
It it when
it starts to lose its colour?
Or when it turns
to its final shade of brown,
or yellow, or orange, or fiery red?
It is when,
through great gust of wind
or, in the most still of moments,
it is released? Untethered
free to drift down
to the ground.
Is it when it lands
making contact with the earth below?
Is it, as the rains fall,
and the days and weeks pass,
when it is broken down
to little more than a skeleton,
a hint, an homage
to what it once was?
Is it when the very last of the leaf is divided
into so small parts
that one could not tell
that it had ever been
a leaf?
Is it when those same parts
are taken up
by microbes in the soil,
digested and pushed out by worms?
Is it when those pieces are drawn up
through roots,
into trunk,
into branches,
into twigs,
and fed into a bud?
Is it when a bud
flourishes and unfurls
into a leaf?
And when
did you
become
no longer
part of the earth?
By Peter Morgan
Tags: Impermanence, change, transition
Post Date: October 2026
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