Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Autumn's Deadly Beauty

Autumn is a beautiful time where the leaves change color to yellows, reds, and browns, and then fall off to float gently to the ground or be carried off dancing with the wind.
We think of it as leaves at the end of their life.
But that’s not the case at all.
The leaves are happy, and secure in their life-giving connection to their tree.
Life is good.
But the tree, sensing the coming of Winter realizes that it can not support its leaf children and itself through the Winter.
Without introspection, it chooses its own life, and shuts off the leaves’ connection.
It has turned off life support for its 1000 children.
The tree has no knife, so the leaves hang on, slowly turning the ochres colors of plant death.
Until they can hang on no more and fall or are carried off by an uncaring wind.
Autumn is mass murder.
A silent one.

1 comment:

Elizabeth Trail said...

Are leaves really analogous to children? Trees have children, after all ... or are leaves more like a body part that gets shed when it's no longer serving a function -- like dog hair?