What Matters As Advent Approaches

It felt so cold this morning that I could feel it working in my bones, as if little ice crystals were forming in the synovial fluid of my knuckles and knees and ankles. The world outside was a frosted sheet of patched russet, an expanse of the leaves weighed down by the same sort of  tiny ice crystals. While Jinx and I were walking (Bluebelle sticking close to my wife in the warm house), I saw a large red oak leaf detach from the tree over near the cemetery and glide like a paper airplane down, then over, then back this way, then down a little more, then that way, then back, then down, then twirling and auguring, and finally skidding down onto the glistening grass in the pasture. I whispered what I usually whisper when I see a leaf come loose from its limb and fall to earth. “You matter.” And I believe it as I said it and I whispered it a few more times as I walked behind the spotted menace, pondering how the little flat thing the size of my hand had once waved high above, a little engine of alchemy, catching the wild rays of the sun and transforming them into food and energy and sending down its treasure into the tree that held it by its one, slender foot. Doing this over and over again, through the months, first warm then hot then cool, until the tree released it under my gaze and it came down to the ground it will now help nourish, and it became lost in the ochre and saffron and rust of the field it once watched over. And we returned to the house, and the dog and I joined with the other two dogs and with the intelligent beauty who for some reason agreed to be my wife all those years ago, and we ran the hours of the day down, ran them down like prey, wore them out and wore ourselves out at the same time, and now we are warm and fed and beginning to drowse. And soon enough, there will be deep and regular breaths being taking by several living creatures in this house, and our dreams will catch the hidden starlight through the ceiling and roof and will power the dark hours until our dreaming selves drift back down into our bodies like cooling leaves, spent and still. And they matter.

~ S.K. Orr