The Life of a Leaf

By Ron Pickett

A leaf settles slowly to the ground.
It flutters and weaves in its fall.
It lands and rolls over and over,
It stops behind a small rock.
Its productive life seems to have ended.

In March, it began as a yellow-green bump.
A bump on a limb, high up on a tree. 
Then, May, and June, July and August 
Those were the productive months,
Oozing sugars and other nutrients.
Removing CO2 -- exhaling Oxygen.
Doing leaf things.

Then, the colour changes back to yellow, then brown.
Its grip on the limb weakens and it slowly falls.
Now, on the ground, a new existence begins.
Its productivity is not over.
It nestles with other leaves.
Narrow, broad, round.
Turning brown and crisp, fragile.
A walker shuffles through the leaves,
They mix and disintegrate.
Pine needles add to the pile.
A bicycle rolls through the leaves.
Leaves are broken and chipped.
The pile changes as pieces are smaller and smaller.
No longer leaves.

Then dust; mixed remains from a thousand leaves.
The dry, cool air breaks down the leaves.
Matter that once produced food for the tree.
Now seemingly useless and discarded.
Then the rains come, the dust slowly dissolves,
It seeps into the ground enriches the soil.
Roots pull the material in, 
It moves up the tree.
It nourishes the spring growth, 
Buds form on the branches.
Yellow-green bumps.
Bumps that will become leaves.
Leaves that will give life to the tree.
Leaves that will fall.
Leaves that will turn brown, turn to dust, be dissolved by the rains.
Taken up by the roots and nourish the tree,
Emerging bumps that will become leaves.
And it repeats, and repeats, and repeats forever.

Ron Pickett is a retired naval aviator with over 250 combat missions and 500 carrier landings. His 90-plus articles have appeared in numerous publications. He enjoys writing fiction and has published five books: Perfect Crimes – I Got Away with It, Discovering Roots, Getting Published, EMPATHS, and Sixty Odd Short Stories.

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