The Whispering Leaves

Desiccated in my torrid wasteland, soil brittle and dry, turns to dust, soars high on the wings of summer wind. Some blows away from me, some I gather in my sagging palm for the skeletal roots exposed fragile of my magnolia tree I reared with care, year after tenuous year. Each passing day engraved in the veins of leaves, changing into verdance of memory. The dust storm scraping the edge of listless time, rose from the depth of dusky horizon. The surge swept the dislodged leaves away, in the rustle I heard them whisper… ‘catch us, hold us before we disappear’. Through the dust swirling to nowhere the last rays of the twilight sun filtered, its spectrum soaked the vestige of soiled dreams, streamed through the enlivened essence. I now chase the drifting mirage, morphed into the fallen leaves flying away from my magnolia tree defoliated, the boughs bare and unburdened. Across the melting shadows of the clouds adrift, through the golden beam of the setting sun I’ll run until I reach the end of the garden path, catch someday the fleeting leaves, hold them until they turn to buds of hope, slip through my weathered fingers, fill the void where the ancient magnolia tree in my pasture once used to be. It will rise from the dust of pain, and make me happy again. March 22, 2020 Contest : Strand Choice N, Any Form, Any Theme Sponsor : Brian Strand