If Your Life is a Leaf

There is something to be said for listening to Leonard Cohen in 1967, when I was 15 years old. I loved words before, but after, I revered them as holy and transformative.
I always think of Cohen's "Sisters of Mercy" whenever the earth takes its seasonal tilt away from the sun, and the leaves begin their journey back to the ground.

If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn

They will bind with you love that is graceful and green as a stem.

Last April we borrowed an hour of light from morning and gave it to the end of the day. Last Sunday we paid it back. I never liked this trick of time and light. The northern hemisphere shifts away from the sun in this part of its revolution, no matter what silliness we concoct to extend days in the summer and then strangely withdraw just when the earth is already growing dark. The quickening darkness pulls the leaves from the trees, what ever time is displayed on all of the electronic screens of our lives.

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Now you've seen my falling leaf photos. Yikes! they are quite hard to capture. Yes, that's ground frost in the top photo. And those three little shiny blips in the lower right, below the leaves are actually drops of water falling from the tree and catching the early morning light.

If you have a photograph that depicts the beauty of our earth, please send it to tortoisetrail at gmail dot com. Pam is hosting Good Planets at Tortoise Trail this Saturday. I hope you will show her how beautiful our earth really is.