In Discovery Park, the towering big leaf maples are still mostly mantled in green, but some leaves already let go of life, and have fallen to the ground.I pick these up, transfixed by their intricate veins, brilliant with chlorophyll, the surrounding leaf tissue dying in a yellow haze.
Glowing gold turns dusky, before crumbling and decaying into humus; home to worms and beetles and thousands of other life forms invisible to us in their dark netherworld.
The fallen leaf is an end and a beginning. Blessed are the big leaf maples.
