Testimony of Leaves

Behold a leaf. A single leaf. So fragile it tears like paper, crushes in your hand to a moist stain, sharply fragrant. Dry, it burns swift and crackling like gunpowder. Held to the light, its veins are like bone work in silhouette. Eden bleeds through.

This single leaf, joined to the tree, drinks poison from the air and spills out oxygen. It tilts to catch the sun, to distill heat and light down the shadows, down to the roots and back up to limbs. To shade the earth. To feed me and you.

A leaf. One single leaf. There are billions upon billions - dancing on tree branches, leaning into the sun, falling to the ground, crumbling into the soil and nourishing the mother from which they came.

It is a marvel really. We live amidst surpassing wonders. It is the air we breathe, the ground we walk on, the skin we inhabit, the way our insides tick and pulse and spin all on their own.

It is these myriad amazing things - toes and eyes, leaf veins and cloudbursts, bedrock and ozone - that by their very constancy and durability wear familiar. The sheer steadfastness of things that surround and uphold us are dull with the caking of the ordinary.

But there is veritable wisdom in nature. In the trees and the sky, the sand and sea and rock that are the immortal backdrop of our lives. The essence of every living thing is embedded in who we are. What the sky knows of passing clouds, we know of passing heartache. What the birds know of air brushing under their wings, we know of the rush of true freedom. What the uppermost tree leaf knows of light as it spreads open for the first time, we know of hope and desire and rebirth.

We all have known moments like this, moments beneath the grid of time - where the soft wind moving through the tree branches is today and one hundred years ago. Where the world is wet with anticipation simply because the sun rises anew each day. Moments without struggle or strain, without manipulation or grasping or safeguarding. There is just the natural unfolding of things. The rhythematic beat of the seasons. The testimony of leaves.