Chasing the Whispering Leaves

In my torrid terrain soil brittle and dry turns to dust little by little, soars high on the wings of wild wind, some blows away from me, some I gather in sagging palm for feeding the skeletal roots exposed fragile of my magnolia tree I reared with care year after tenuous year. Each passing day engraved in veins of leaves morphed into verdant memory. The storm at the edge of listless time rose from the depth of dusk, the surge swept the leaves away. In the rustle I heard them whisper… ‘catch us, hold us before we disappear’. Through the swirling dust the twilight sun gleamed, its spectrum sucked by my blood stoic and stolid streamed through the enlivened essence. I now chase the drifting mirage of the fallen leaves flying away from my magnolia tree defoliated, the boughs bare and forlorn. Through the shadows of the drifting cloud on the beam of the setting sun I’ll run until I reach the end of gloomy path, catch someday the fleeting leaves, hold them until they turn to grains of hope, slip through my weathered fingers, fill the void where the ancient magnolia tree once used to be. From the dust it'll rise, and make me happy again. Written : April 12, 2019 May 18, 2020 Contest : Strand No. 760 Sponsor : Brian Strand