April opens the door to spring. It’s the month when the Great Silent Voice speaks: “Time’s up, release without remorse and make way for the new.”
Nature has a different set of rules for the live oaks that canopy the islands of coastal Georgia. They’re programmed to shed their leaves in spring, not November. It disguises our winters. We like that.
But now, last year’s leaves have run their course. Their grip on the Great Mother oak relaxes. One by one, without complaint or coaxing, they begin their short but final journey ‘home.’ Mission accomplished, job completed. Now freed from their work, the transients collectively head south for their permanent retirement.
The enormous oak Titans suddenly stand naked and exposed. But only for a few days. Their spindly skeletons stretch skyward, communing with the winds. Redwing blackbirds give stark contrast to the sky as they bark orders from the barren branches.
Sunlight shines profusely on the warm ground below. The Great Silent Voice speaks again, “Make haste, my small children.” The vegetation undergrowth below immediately springs into life. Somehow it knows its hour in the sun will be short.
Nature is consistent, operating a tightly organized process of life. It makes all appointments on time. Hard on the heels of the leaves’ departure, small green hints of life, barely visible to the eye, begin incipient life. Almost overnight the oaks emerge fully clothed, bathed in a verdant wardrobe.
In a short time, the fallen leaf carpet becomes compost. The Voice speaks softly to these fallen workers, “Sleep on, you have served well. It’s time for another to bear the burden. For you to cling beyond your appointed time would render you a dull, lusterless relic of the past, an antique of a bygone season.”
Leaves listen, never argue. They instinctively know that new life requires them to move on. They’re innately schooled in photosynthesis, knowing that when their green morphs to brown, their ability to synthesize food is terminally impaired. They’ve become useless. Unlike some politicians, they know when to say, “Enough.”
Oak leaves don’t think. But if they could, would they have a self-esteem problem? Would they look around and see billions of other leaves and say, “O, of what value am I, just one among so many, and a little one at that?”
And if the Mother Tree could answer, it might say, “If not for each of you, I could not exist.” Is this answer sufficient to solve low self-esteem? One wonders. After all, there is a time and a season for everything.
Perhaps to assuage the hearts of the fallen leaves, the Titan might say, “Consider the acorns, my children. They also have to let go, to drop, to die. Somehow they’re programmed to know that there’s a squirrel waiting to bury them so they can again take root downward and bear fruit upward. Trust me, My ways are perfect.”
The March breezes carry the whisper of the Great Silent Voice as it speaks tender assurances to the leaves. “As you were not anxious in the day of your birth, be not anxious in the day of your demise. Well done, good and faithful leaves.”
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Mystics might find a metaphor, maybe even a simile, in contemplation of a leaf’s final ‘let go.’ After all, it’s a one and done, its first and its last.
If metaphors could be extrapolated, they might lead us to the conclusion that our very own final drop could be an exhilarating and incredible journey home. Personally, I look forward to my very own noble experience of letting go.
Bud Hearn
April 7, 2017