Daily Life,  Reflections

The Last Leaf

December 9, 2019 /

Those three words may conjure the famous O. Henry short story, which I read as a boy and which introduced me to the craft of William Sydney Porter. But this is not a story, and there is no surprise ending.

The tree under which I park at my job is a forest pansy redbud, a prematurely gnarled presence with large, heart-shaped leaves that are green in the spring, reddish-purple in the summer, and deep maroon in the fall. The last few weeks have withered and stripped the leaves from the tree. All except one.

For two weeks now, I have watched one leaf that dangles directly over my windshield when I am parked. All the other leaves have gradually fallen or have been blown from the tree, but perhaps a half-dozen hardy ones have hung on, including the one I mention here. Today, after the windy weekend just past, I arrived at work and parked beneath the forest pansy. Every leaf on the tree had been blown away except the one just above me. When I got out of my car, I went to the branch and reached up and touched the leaf with one finger. It felt dry, as light as paper, and the stem attaching it to the branch was as wiggly as a loose tooth. I sprinkled some crackers on the ground beneath the tree for my friends the crows, and then I turned and walked to the building.

After work, I was opening the driver’s side door and looked up at the leaf. it was swinging back and forth in the rainy breeze. And then I looked down at the black asphalt below the branch, and I knew that I didn’t want the leaf to end up there. I reached up and touched the leaf. The branch released it, and it fluttered down into my hands.

At home, I took the leaf up into the woods behind our house and I placed it on the ground with a degree of reverence that would doubtless elicit hoots or eye-rolls from some. I was comforted in knowing that the leaf would not end up crushed into pavement beneath car tires, or blown against a concrete curb to await the vulgar roar of a gasoline-powered blower in the first warm week of spring. The leaf would help fertilize a tiny patch of ground in the woods, a patch as small as the palm of my hand, and it would be, in its disintegrating brown fragments,  the only forest pansy redbud in all the acres around our home.

I do not know why my mind works the way it does, or why these things are important to me. I do not understand why my eyes seek out and notice certain things, certain patterns, certain personal realities. I cannot tell why I have a continual interior conversation during all my waking hours, or why I seem to grow more silent with each passing month.

My mind wanders these days, and I can almost see my memory diminishing like a sand dune in a gale. But the world around me and its millions of little elements and fixtures are growing in vitality and importance.

For now, for today, I am joined to this tree. I can hear the wind, but I am yet joined to this tree.

~ S.K. Orr

13 Comments

  • Bookslinger

    December 12, 2019 at 2:18 pm

    I think there are degrees of naturalness.

    It could be just a matter of static electricty, but I get a different emotional/spiritual feel from clothing made of cotton or wool than I do from clothing made of synthetic or oil-based fibers.
    —

    I buy unground wheat kernals (aka wheat berries) and make my own flour at home. It could be just a psychological artefact/effect, but there is something spiritually/emotionally different about that flour than the store-bought stuff that has had the bran and germ removed and other stuff added in.

    And after I work it, there is something of “me” in the bread, perhaps analogous to growing and eating your own fruit/vegetables, or sitting on furniture that you made yourself.
    —

    Places have spirit too.

    Though all of these could be just as much psychological as spiritual, wherein your mind brings up pass correlations with the object or place, things that happened there, or with the object.

    However, maybe psychology is more spirit than mere neurons flashing messages back and forth. I think the human mind resides as much, or more, in the soul as it does in the brain.

    The brain could merely be the interface between the mind/body and mind/soul.

    • admin

      December 14, 2019 at 7:57 am

      I think places have their own “spirit,” too, Bookslinger. I don’t think they’re necessarily tied to associations with the place and the past, though. My experience has been that its possible to discern, to sense and at least partially understand, the “feel” of a place even when I’ve never been there before or know nothing about it. I remember reading years ago something…can’t recall who wrote it or where….to the effect that places can act like dry cell batteries, holding the “charge” of events and people from long ago. I intuit that this is very true. Some places are peaceful and lovely not just to the eye, but to the spirit. And some places exude an evil or a menace that probably comes from foul deeds committed there. An abandoned gas station, overgrown by kudzu, can have an overpowering sense of sadness and dashed dreams, reflecting the hopes and dreams of the people who poured into it their lifeforce, only to see it fail and close when the interstate was built nearby and siphoned off all the business. Little sparks of the past still flash in physical places, I think.

      And I liked what you said about the brain perhaps being the interface between mind/body and mind/soul. It could be. It could be.

  • Craig Davis

    December 11, 2019 at 7:24 am

    As Dr. Charlton has written, we are surrounded by beings. It is fairly easy to see that in plants and animals, and not so hard in mountains and rivers. I’m still working on how that applies to Oldsmobiles and office chairs.

    • admin

      December 12, 2019 at 6:15 am

      Craig, I’ve had the same sort of thoughts about Oldsmobiles and office chairs myself. I used to have a pretty simplistic “natural things good, manmade things bad” view of the world. But one day, I started to realize that even Oldsmobiles are made from natural materials. Even plastics are derived from natural materials, and the wisdom that allows man to extract and fashion and fabricate such things. So these days, I see all things as having a natural “presence,” and appreciate what I see as the life within them. This sort of thinking has changed me, I believe.

      • Craig Davis

        December 12, 2019 at 7:33 am

        I have considered the idea that everything, ultimately, has a natural origin. So far I have not received an intuitive sense of its truth. I will remain open to the possibility, particularly considering that I value your opinion.

    • admin

      December 10, 2019 at 5:30 pm

      That’s an extremely interesting paper, Craig. Thanks very much for posting the link. I’m going to forward it to a monk with whom I correspond. He has some very perceptive spiritual observations about plants and think this will interest him.