Leaves

Image by Dennis Peterson from Pixabay

How is it that autumn, a season characterized by death and decay, is also such a beautiful time of year? Why are leaves that have lost their chlorophyll, and are well on their way to becoming dirt, so very lovely? Evidently, it is only when the chlorophyll disappears that the yellow, orange, and red pigments that have been there all along can finally come into their own. And isn’t that often true in life as well? That it is only when a part of us has died that other, potentially more beautiful, elements of ourselves can emerge?

Leaves

by Ursula Le Guin

Years do odd things to identity.
What does it mean to say
I am that child in the photograph
at Kishamish in 1935?
Might as well say I am the shadow
of a leaf of the acacia tree
felled seventy years ago
moving on the page the child reads.
Might as well say I am the words she read
or the words I wrote in other years,
flicker of shade and sunlight
as the wind moves through the leaves.

From the collection, So Far So Good (Copper Canyon Press, 2018)