Whisper of Rippling Wind

From my desiccated garden turned wasteland, the dust soared high on the wings of summer wind, surging on the canopy of the lone magnolia tree, I nurtured with love for many years. The dust storm scraping the sands of somber time rose from the edge of the dusky horizon of strife, swept away the dislodged leaves of the tree. In their rustle I heard them whisper … “catch us, hold us before we disappear”. Through the dense dust of despair, swirling with the shards of the fallen sky, the last rays of the twilight sun filtered, its spectrum suffused the dregs of soiled dreams. Trying to catch them I chased the migrating mirage, that morphed into the floating fallen leaves, flying away from my defoliated magnolia tree, its boughs then bare and unburdened, like my lonesome life languishing in wilderness. Across the sauntering shadows of the clouds adrift, through the golden beams of the setting sun, I soared on the wings of the wafting wind to catch the fragile leaves flying away. As they carried away my dwindled dreams that once blossomed in the magnolia tree, to the far end of my garden’s fading landscape, I heard the rippling wind whisper to me… “you’ll catch them at the edge of twilight”. July 18, 2021 Contest : Whispers Sponsor : John Lawless