Five Dead Leaves

Five Dead Leaves

Grey nights draw in Sill bare save for five ships Bereft of their whispering waves To ride, run aground.

Their sailing days are done, The first pair blackened, Shrunken, before their time, Stripped of grace befitting them Crumbling to the touch Torn by zephyrs past, their scars still present. In their tree, there is no remembrance. They couldn’t bear their weight, Wind bore them a pittance.

The third is a cadaver Larger than its predecessors, Yet only to be rent by nature’s harsher fingers Blackened too, hidden under its sufferance Shared with the others yet flew further and fell harder. It must have danced with others in that sky, Doubtful it flew close, unlikely still it saw notice.

Flakes remain, clinging to the skeleton of what was.

The fourth is a tale of two halves Split on its central pillar, the stem-half flakes most Blackened and withered to the shame of the duo, Here it bore its weight and broke. Its end rebukes its beginning, still holding precious green Remnant of its past self, felt so far away And yet it is less blackened, almost sailing a different tide. Wind still ravages at the change of a face, The blink of an eye, the sounding of a note, Yet here it sees its assailant, here it knows. It fell nearest to its asunder and saved from breaking.

The fifth’s time is not yet past Green still has a hold, Yet this too is shrunken, Precious growth robbed, it yearns For the winds that bore it, their fingers weaker now than before Yet in that struggle it must have had meaning and direction

Chaos, yet directed. To return to the skies would be its downfall Yet still it yearns.

The sky reflects its offerings, And now I cannot see their compatriots. Do they miss them, as their tree does? Do their trees miss each other? What place do five leaves have in a world of a hundred Their tree but one in billions? Time will carry them away again, And there is rejoice amidst despair For five dead leaves hold no imprint on the world that wrought them. More will grow.

Alexander Lahiri

Illustration by Breseya Clark