The Leaves Let Go

In April The Great Silent Voice speaks, “Time’s Up…release without remorse.” As if on cue from The Conductor, the Oak Tree Chorus responds. The leaves let go.

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Last year’s leaves from the island water oaks have run their course. Their grip on the Great Mother relaxed. One by one, without remorse, complaint or coaxing, they begin their short but final journey ‘home.’ Mission accomplished. Their job complete, the transients collectively head south for their permanent rest.

For a brief few days the oak Titans stand naked, looking sad and forlorn. Their spindly skeletons are exposed. Profuse sunlight shines beneath them. Then the Great Silent Voice speaks again, “Make haste, grow.” The vegetation beneath springs to life, knowing somehow its hour in the sun is short.

Nature is a restless, but highly organized process. It makes all appointments on time. Hard on the heels of the leaves’ departure, small green nubbins, barely discernible to the eye, begin incipient life. Almost overnight the oaks emerge re-clothed, garbed in their new wardrobe.

But back to the fallen leaves, those that have now carpeted the sandy soils below. The Great Silent Voice whispers again to these fallen workers, “Sleep on, rest easy…you have served well. It’s time for another. To cling beyond your appointed time would result in being a dull, lusterless relic of the past ~~ a tragic antique of a bygone age. To remain would retard the growth and defile the clothed majesty of the forest Titan.”

Leaves never talk back. They consent that new life requires them to move on. They’re innately schooled in photosynthesis, knowing that when their green morphs to brown, their ability to synthesize food is terminally impaired. They’ve become useless. Sad, but true.

If oak leaves could think, would they have a self-esteem problem? They’d look around and see billions upon billions of other leaves, and perhaps say, “Of what value am I, one among so many, and a little one at that?”

And if the Mother Tree could respond, “If not for each of you, I could not exist.” Is this answer sufficient to solve a self-esteem problem? A cause for contemplation. After all there is a time and a season for everything.

Sometimes in rare silences it may be possible to hear the wind’s voice whisper. It speaks a tender assurance to the leaves, “As you were not anxious in the day of your birth, be not anxious in the day of your death…well done, good and faithful leaf.” Mystics are not without honor in some circles.

Maybe when we walk out in the early morning light to grab the newspaper we can stop beneath these titans and contemplate on the miracle of the leaf’s ‘Let-Go’ ~~ its first and its last, its one and only. How noble an act!

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Such was a recent thought of my own. It’s a sure bet that letting go is not nearly as hard as we make it…and it must be a great ride home!

I can hardly wait for my own noble experience!

Bud Hearn
April 25, 2014