A Memorial to Leaves

Leaves. Those old enough might remember the song, Autumn Leaves - when the leaves come tumbling down.

Do you ever want to run and rescue leaves when they are falling off their secure branches, turning from brilliant greens to gorgeous colors as they lose life, as they die on earth’s surfaces, be it grass, dirt, sand, tarmac, swimming pool water, all kinds of roof textures, falling onto them, staying for a while, then swishing away to some final tomb? I remember taking a rake and making giant piles of crunchy brown leaves and then jump into them like jumping into a pool of water or a soft bed. What a joy that was on a crisp fall day.

But today, surely the neighborhood blower with its atrocious noise is walking by and moving these leaves into a pile like Nazis did to human beings, burning them or deposing of them somewhere so we cannot find them anymore. They consider dead leaves garbage. Maybe, if they could be chopped into mulch, then there is a future, and they might become part of strengthening tiny bulbs waiting to birth stalks and flowers to announce the coming of spring.

Whether it’s a ginkgo, a maple, a honey-locus trees, gum trees, yellow Aspen or black Hawthorn - trees, except for the range of evergreens, undress themselves when the heat of summer wanes, maybe to get refreshed, to get a new start, to shake off any spots or damage that wind or storm may have done to their branches and leaves and they fly to the ground like tired paper dolls. It’s falls but really, it has crept up on winter this year. Seasons aren’t always right on.

As I do my speed walk around the building’s parking lot, the leaves are falling like snowflakes or colored paper strips when someone wins a singing contest. No, I don’t sing except in my heart. But the leaves are dissecting themselves from their branches, those things that held them in place and fed them whatever was needed to keep them green and then, as if it withdraws the healthy nutrients, stops as the heat wanes and wind and storm rev up and winter crawls in. And they fall from their high spots where they have watched birds fly in and hidden in their embrace, where they had shadowed those seeking shelter from the acid hot sun, and where rain had come now and then to wash them off and give them a fresh look and new nourishment.

The sturdy pines, competing against giant eucalyptus trees whose bark begins to peel, both of which surround our Uruguayan cottage. One can constantly hear the drop of pine cones that sound like bombs on the metal roof, and there are pine needles that make strange patterns on the tarmac of streets. Some give shade, some do not.

But when spring gets on its shoes and starts to re-start its cycle, after trees have rested over the winter time maybe cleansing themselves in the rain and snow and ice, then suddenly, it’s time to birth again - from a tiny bud to a giant branch of beautiful green leaves. Of course, in spring, there are a different kind of colored leaves than the fall - floral pink dogwood tree or purple jacaranda or blue wisteria put forth flower and perfume in the spring as a sign to wake up everybody and watch our beauty clean up the winter and stand up for summer. That’s when we need, most of all, shade.

So the giant branches, the beloved forests, the miles of pathways designed for hiking with those breathtaking finds as one curves around and climbs up and down mountains and hills and valleys. Even the deserts have a quick moment when something births, but the world of the desert is tough, with only a few palm trees in small oasis where one gets a breath of shade.

How amazing this creation of God? How trees survive is because they are God’s own, I think. We may plant, but God loves his trees, from the Cedars of Lebanon, which, in the Bible, were destroyed because all the kings and bosses cut them down to build enormous castles, to the sky-touching pine trees that weave back and forth in the wind. And as Walt Whitman wrote, “every individual is an expression of the whole: the “leaf among the grass.”  That’s us as we wander among the autumn leaves and shelter ourselves in the shadows of giant trees.

 ~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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