The Leaves Let Go

It’s March, the month when The Great Silent Voice speaks, “Time’s Up…release without remorse.” As if on cue from The Conductor, the Let-Go Chorus responds.

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We live on an island along the Georgia coast. Last year’s leaves from the water oaks have run their course. Their grip on the Great Mother relaxes. One by one, without complaint or coaxing, they began their short but final journey ‘home.’ Mission accomplished. Their job is over. Now freed from work, the transients collectively head south for their permanent retirement.

For a brief few days the oak Titans stand naked and exposed. Their spindly skeletons stretch skyward, communing with the winds. Redwing blackbirds give stark contrast to the sky as they bark orders from the branches.

Sunlight shines profusely onto the ground below. The Great Silent Voice speaks again, “Make haste, my small children.” The vegetation undergrowth immediately springs into life. Somehow it knows its hour in the sun will be short.

Nature is consistent, operating a 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 clothed, garbed in their new wardrobe.

But back to the fallen leaves, those that now become compost for the sandy soils below. The Great Silent Voice softly speaks again to these fallen workers, “Sleep on, rest easy. You have served well. It’s time for another to bear the burden. To cling beyond your appointed time would render you a dull, lusterless relic of the past ~~ a tragic antique of a bygone season. For you to remain would retard the growth and defile the clothed majesty of the forest Monarch.”

Leaves don’t argue. They instinctively know 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 and, unlike some of us, they know when to say, “Enough.” Sad, but true.

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

If the Mother Tree could answer, it might say, “If not for each of you, I could not exist.” Is this answer sufficient to solve a self-esteem problem? One wonders. After all, there is a time and a season for everything.

Perhaps to assuage the hearts of the fallen leaves the Titan might say, “Consider the acorns, my children. They also have to let go, to die and drop. They know that unless they fall onto the earth and a squirrel buries them, their life comes to nothing. They must die to live.”

The breezes carry the whisper of the Great Silent Voice as it speaks tender assurances to the leaves. “As you were not anxious in the day of your birth, be not anxious in the day of your demise. Well done, good and faithful leaves.”

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Possessing even a small degree of mysticism, it might be easy to smile in contemplation of a leaf’s final ‘Let-Go’ ~~ its one and only, its first and its last. How noble an act!

And you know what? I’ll bet the final drop is an exhilarating and incredible journey home. I look forward to my own noble experience.

Bud Hearn
March 20, 2015