The Leaf

The Leaf

The leaves fell from an elder poplar tree just above the playground where the children gathered after school. One in particular (leaf not child) was swept away by a gust from the north, carrying it past the slides, past the monkey bars, over the children’s heads, but for just one fleeing moment it appeared as if the littlest one had a chance at it. Time stopped and the collective attention of the children merged into one eye, one view, one desire as the little one reached his hand to the sky and took a little eternity from the grasp of his outstretched palm, an empty eternity nonetheless, but enough for his taste buds to enflame the tongue and cool the throat. The leaf continued its first fall, its last fall, when a lucky gust sprang from beneath and the parabolic rise over the boy’s dreams, never to be realized, fluctuated into a flat-line, signifying stasis, emergency rooms, sterility, but life again as the parabolic inverse of the cousin carried in from the South and tore it away from was known, down it went, further and further into the descent measured in seconds, but felt with that piece of eternity firmly clenched in the small boy’s palms…