But I Miss You Most of All

I like trees. I like leaves. I can muster up an affection for leaves ... falling ... from trees. 'But I miss you most of all, my Darlings' when Autumn Leaves must be raked.

Many of the folk who visit me and seem to capsize -- one way or the other -- their boats, either into manic mischief or a depressed pseudo-death, rather than a juggled mixture of of sadness and glee, have, indeed, suffered great losses. Their World treated them as things ... as objects. They were abused or shamed and often came to treat themselves as if they were inert things.

The make self-destructive decisions in one or the other of these postures ... Whirling  or Bed-bound -- as if Dead.

The Last Quarter has its abandonments. I once had children working shoulder to shoulder on raking and blowing and moving those leaves.  It's true! I admit it. I have moments when I have passing reveries that I've been deconstructed like an Old Shed -- left to rot behind the garage. The sense that the 0-55 crowd don't give much credence to my having had a complex past ... or, hey! ... a future conjure up in me maudlin thought.

The Sun is just coming up. Norway Maple, Sugar Maple, Oak, and Willow leaves colored by some Red Japanese Maple. I need to greet them with a recognition that my once-indentured Spawn have found their own families and emancipated themselves. I need to go out there among those leaves ... having been left.

Long live freedom!