A familiar feeling in the air wafted into my being,

That memory of the season of the leaves falling.

The coolish winter was silently receding,

The summer in its harshness was raring.

My dependent heart would not accept my tree bereft,

For those leaves were her identity and her beauty.

Of those leaves, which were her identity and beauty,

And that tree had sheltered my body from the Sun.

Shared my fear, begged I, to her not to change,

For I didn’t know of any place I could last under the Sun.

The tree remained bemused, smiling at my naivete,

She, by then, had lost her innocence and become worldly wise.

She had seen the harshness of life and its crooked ways,

That the fallen leaves would turn into manure, which would help her grow.

Human nature, like the leaves, must change at the right season,

The old, giving way to the new to justify our reasons.

*

Jay Jagdev | 15^th January 2024