I am a leaf

I am a leaf,

A leaf that falls.

We all fall sometime,

Why not fall in Fall?

But as the fateful season nears…

I tremble fiercely on my branch;

I cling to all that I have left

Don’t tear me from my happy place;

Life is brittle – I’ll fight the theft!

Death cannot get the best of me!

Of course it can’t – I’ll kick its ass!

Bring it on, you Judas bastard!

I won’t die sprawled upon the grass!

But Silence will not answer me…

The dear old faces of my friends,

Robust and full of fragrant scent,

Fade into brown upon the ground

And make no noise, no laugh, no sound.

Why am I the last to live –

The last to cling to nature’s sieve?

Is there a natural way to fall?

Or do I choose death above it all?

Should I let go and join their fate?

Can fear be coupled up with hate?

If I let go will I be missed?

Will I still live? Will life persist?

Why not let go? Why hold on?

The friends I love are dead and gone.

To journey down… maybe I must,

But down below I’ll turn to dust.

But as the breeze brushes my face…

I startle… was that a caress?

A ripple disturbs my sadness…

What if this Fall is here to guide

The fall I know I need to take?

Though I see nothing but a plunge –

All traces of my life expunged,

What if my fall is not all?

What if a call beckons my fall?

Down in the brown I see a flame…

From glowing green to bloody red,

A foreign furnace sparks the dead…

Like winter frost upon a pane

That melts to let eyes feast again,

Maybe I have played my part;

Maybe the fall starts greater art.

I’m still so frightened of the fall,

But I will give the fall my all.

This fall I take, my fall I make:

A determined leap into the cold;

I don’t know how or where I’ll land,

But know I’m destined for the land.

Whatever Fall has brought us all,

I am a leaf; this is my fall.

The featured image is title “October Leaf” and is (c) Lancia E. Smith. It is used here with glad permission for Cultivating and The Cultivating Project.

Christina Brown

A founding member of The Cultivating Project, Christina has been fascinated by beauty her whole life. Color, texture, pattern, fragrance, melody, light – all of the boundless ways in which creation shines – ignites her imagination, compelling her to create. Even as a wee sprite, Christina was dedicated to wordsmithing and sketching her way through its marvels in an attempt to capture, at least partially, the imprint of the Creator within it. But writing and drawing are not her only creative endeavors; several years ago she took on the laborious (but rewarding) task of nurturing a garden in the dismal soils of the Rocky Mountain foothills, and has eagerly employed her spade (alongside her pen) as a tool to cultivate and curate the beauty around her. 

She has two little gardeners-in-training who embody all these marvels and more in their merry little faces. She and her husband Brian are the founders of the Anselm Society based in Colorado Springs, whose mission and calling is a renaissance of the Christian Imagination. She serves as the Director of the Anselm Society Arts Guild and her creative work can be found at LiveBeautiful.today and on Instagram.