THANK YOU, LEAF!

Thank you, leaf.

Thank you for your one thread in the tapestry of a hundred greens that forms the backdrop of my every summer glance;

For being my breath’s inverse, exhaling exactly what I need, inhaling what I don’t;

For your microcosmic demonstration of how watersheds feed rivers...though in reverse;

For helping cleanse the mess we make of air and soil;

For your voice in the whispered chorus stirred by wind…and for dancing to the music;

                          

For laying one tile in a living roof that shelters a community, from bacteria to bugs, to bears, to beings;

For thriving on the very rays that would hurt me, for shade that cools whole forests and neighborhoods;

For nourishing my hungry eyes with works of color, form, texture and pattern;

For your showy translucence that begged me to make lampshades of you;

For your gracious surrender to winter, your spent crisps falling to blanket yards and delight young hearts;

For your elegant testament to the inevitable cycle of life, fed by, then feeding the soil beneath your feet;

For teaching me that this promise of renewal is more real than many folks’ futile hope for permanence;

For all these gifts—and those of your earthly kin—three-hundred quadrillion* thank yous, leaf!

* Three-hundred quadrillion (300,000,000,000,000,000): the approximate number of leaves on all our planet's trees—based on the journal Science's estimate of three trillion trees, and using half of Quora's estimate of 200,000 leaves per mature tree.