leaf

once, as all leaves were, it began as a bud on a branch. heeding the call of relentless evolution, it began to grow; cells differentiating, specializing. till, at some stage, it had unfurled there; a minor miracle on a twig connected to some branch that in itself was connected to the trunk and thence the roots in the earth.

and from those roots came the water and trace minerals, up, in defiance of gravity by capilliary action; to the leaf where by chlorophyll's might light was converted, combined with the water, carbon dioxide split - and from that chemical reaction the food came to being, that food that the tree would grow with.

one wonders at the events without that the leaf, indeed the tree, would be a mute, deaf, blind witness to. it may be said that the leaf would be naturally attuned to the light, that source of power for the chemical reaction within. but there were also the other forces, some of nature: rain, wind, earthquake, fire...

of fiestas and marching bands, of incessant honking and the diesel rumble of jeepneys and trucks, of conversations between myriad humans, of the twittering of the birds; the nigh-microscopic pattering of insects and the like - of these the leaf might only have trembled, perhaps aware at some cellular level...

and if, by some stroke of random chance it was not bent into service as a webbed home for a colony of ants, nor for a colony of spiders, the leaf spent its life alone among it's brethren in the sun...

...there would be a time when by some clock of chance design its workings would begin to falter, and the flow of water and nutrients from the twig would begin to wane...

and there it would be, still attached by cellular bonds; but those were now brittle with the onset of decay.

and then, a gust of wind, and that bond was broken. now the brittle thing gave in to the force of ever present gravity, physcially held aloft by the impact of millions of atoms of gas in the atmosphere rushing along in that selfsame gust; leaf spiralling ever downward, but not to the earth, no, not at this time.

it fell, and came to rest at the junction of metal and glass, at the point where a car's hood met the windshield.

the driver got in, early morning. car started and began to move. of the little brown papery thing no attention was paid; there, lying just before the wipers.

and then it caught the driver's eye. as the car got onto the highway and began to speed up, somehow the leaf did not blow away. there was a pocket of still air there, at the junction of the hood and windshield just before the wipers.

somehow this little observation made the driver smile. wonder how long the leaf will stay there? all the way to the office, perhaps.

but then, circumstances demanded an abrupt lane change, and of a sudden the leaf was gone.