A Life in the Death of a Leaf

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

“Solitude is independence.” – Hermann Hesse

“In solitude, the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.” – Laurence Sterne

“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.” – Jean Paul Sartre

“Solitude is a good place to visit, but a poor place to stay”. - Josh Billings (alias Henry Wheeler Shaw)

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.” – May Sarton

Now ,even as a child, I enjoyed a close relationship with nature, the more so when on my own and unavailable to intrusive interruptions.  I did not need to be in a wood or by the sea or even outside my own room. Books and their authors were not only my friends, they were my mentors too; it would only take word or a phrase and I would be transported, across time and personal space, where alter ego would feel free to make a case for… whatever.

The only drawback was – and, I suspect, always will be – that I learned more about myself than anyone else would ever see; warts ‘n’ all….😉

A LIFE IN THE DEATH OF A LEAF

Alone and feeling lonely,
like the only leaf left on a tree
that’s been battered
by an autumnal wind raging 
at… what, exactly?
Whatever, having me empathise,
with a leaf on a tree
I'd barely noticed before, yet, suddenly, 
we are as one, we three

“It is but the way of things,
murmured the tree “that I lose
my dear companions
through those seasons of my life
that our Earth Mother 
would have  them kept safe
for future generations 
to look to see, hear to listen and pass on,
all the wiser for being reborn.”   

A fine calm and quietude 
came over me, lonely no more,
in a splendid solitude
for witnessing a gust tug the leaf
from its tree, each farewell
a burst of happy-sad 
on this heart-and-soul, grown closer,
in all truthfulness, to the bitter-sweetness
of evergreen life forces…  

Copyright R. N. Taber 2022