THE LEAF SHALL FALL

All of these days will come to an end,

this life no more important, no more lasting

than a shrivelled, brown leaf shall be

in autumn, laying wet on

withered grass where flowers now grow. 

But the tree from which the leaf came

will live! you may shout - yes, the tree of humanity

will live on and on, but what comfort

it gives to the leaf when it falls

that other leaves will sprout in distant spring?

But I am a human being!

I can guess your cry

of importance; yes, one of soon

eight billion leaves,

as important as the eight billion others.

You are not the organism,

you are a part of it, through which it lives -

and which it discards;

and the organism itself

is but a bough of a larger growth.

04.07.2019