Tree Maple

Autumn comes around, stripping Tree Maple of its leafy fabric.
What stays behind is the woody trunk with its stems and branches and a carpet tailored with its leaves for us to walk on.
Oh, I’d rather not walk on earth than stump on these subtle pieces of nature’s art.
My heart yearns to keep them all between pages of all my favorite books, but alas, I can’t.
For they’re too infinite and my hands- too infinitesimally small to hold them all.
Tree Maple now, is nothing but a woody framework made of infinite shades of brown- all infused in one another.
Its trunk- solitary, extending its arms into numerous directions in space, as if in a dilemma of whether staying close or moving apart would let them be at ease.
Pretty much like us, I reckon.
Silhouettes of tiny birds walking, hopping on its barky, brown branches, dance against the light blue infinity behind;
While I stop by, gazing at the present my eyes are watching, sliding my hands into my pockets to bring out my phone and clicking and saving – Memory of a day in fall.
Tree Maple, keeps standing there, naked for so many sweet autumn days;
Swaying with the wind now, doesn’t make it feel scared of losing pieces of its fabric anymore.
Only when the wind blows too hard, does it flinch quietly at the loss of some part of its brown but have we ever listened to that quiet, I wonder?!
If only silence could be heard.
It still keeps standing there, for, its roots are too deeply seated in the earth;
And maybe it belongs to the earth more than it belongs to itself.
So, it doesn’t care its leaves have all fallen with the arrival of fall.
For letting them go was, is and always will be the only way it can live on.
And maybe it would have hurt so bad, when it would have lost its leaves for the first time.
But, now maybe it has learnt to greet its embellishments “goodbye” the way it greets them “Hi”!
Not wincing- if so- doing it ever so quietly, without a rustle, without a crack.
The fall doesn’t care how beautiful it looked before it took away its fabric,
The winter doesn’t know what happened to it before it gave new pieces of clothing to it,
The wind that blew to take its leaves away didn’t come back to return them to it.
They say what goes around, comes around.
But did they tell you, it doesn’t have to be the one who takes it from you that gives it back to you?!
Autumn takes something that spring returns.
Spring takes something that winter returns.
And summer takes something that monsoon returns.
And I could have conjured up stories or actually lived them, who knows?!
It just keeps moving ahead- the story.
And I wonder, who really knows Tree Maple?!

~Rain