Amid Falling Leaves

In my desiccated wasteland, soil, dry and brittle, turned to dust, swirled on the wings of the summer wind. Some blew away from me, some I collected in my closed palms, that I fed the skeletal roots, exposed fragile, of my rose sapling, I reared with care. The reticulate veins of the curling leaves, tracing the intricate tracks of time, changed into winding lanes of fading memory. The dust storm slashing the edge of listless life, rose from the depth of the twilight horizon. The surge swept the falling leaves away, and in the midst of rustle I heard them sigh… ‘hold us before we disappear’. Through the last dust spinning to nowhere, the residual rays of the setting sun filtered, the spectrum soaked the shards of shattered dreams, I tried to preserve in the niche of enlivened essence, chasing the drifting mirage, morphed into fallen leaves, drifting away from my sapling of rose defoliated, the branches bare, thorns piercing the air. Across the melting shadows of satin clouds adrift, through the golden beams from the dusk horizon, I ran on the trail of the fallen leaves floating away, caught them at the end of the garden path, held them on my chest close to my heart, until they turned into seeds of hope, slipped through my weathered fingers, fell on the soil where the sapling of rose once used to be in my dried out garden. In spring it rose from the dust, and flowered again the rose of longing. Written : July 30. 2020 Contest : Completely Your Choice (10) Sponsor : Brian Strand