Poetry/Prose/Nature/Leaf

Memory Leaves Between Pages Steal Your Heart

Reciprocal Nature Prompt on Leaves

Silent Muse :

Do we see air move ?! But we see her dancing and know the breeze is blowing.

She is part of a crown providing shelter to weary travellers on their days under the sun, and when the sun leaves but snow is being baked, the deeps are filled with a bitter sweet nostalgia, the earth sparkling, feasting on the colors, the ground making merry as she plays softly, to life’s sacred performance of art, earth entering the grand finale before it slips into winter’s white silence….

She turns the path you walk yellow, red and brown, holed and brittle strewn by sidewalks, crushed into pieces as you step on her,

Do you hear her wail?!

Chill covers the planet and we mourn her loss — she laughs, knowing it’s just a matter of time before baby greens will rare their heads inhaling fresh spring air and signalling life and its renewal.

end journey begins sun shine on, penetrate hope amidst life ‘n death leaf kisses Tithonus’s feet pray evergreen in birth next — Re-birth ,Tanka by Author

She carries within the cycle of life, from summer to autumn to winter to spring, changing form, colour, texture, dying to be re-birthed, gifting earth its much-desired verdancy.

Talk of forests begins with her, floating around in the air crisp, you run your fingers through your hair and let her fall by your side.

You know a green story in being written here in nature’s euphony.

Every time she leaves a branch, she reminds the world of separation. Holding her clasped in your palm is holding freedom. Separated from their roots, charting her own direction she falls in love with the earth, finding rest in her arms.

To the world she is dead, but in the world beneath, she mingles with elements to synthesize fodder for new plants to grow, keeping the cycle of life running, creating a golden song of immortality.

Carried by beaks, she finds home on branches she left for good, cradling babies, and providing a home to petite lives.

With insatiable fire in her belly and love in her heart, she tangos through her life’s ricocheting path, changing, bending, replacing old with new, telling an organic story of loss and longing, a script with a happy ending providing hope.

A tender nature element present in quietude, but always creating the right background for colours of nature to bloom, a perfect muse to a poet’s being, making solemn music for the soulful earth — She is a leaf.

Maybe why Rabindranath Tagore once wrote, “ Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”

Leafing Literature:

“It’s time,” she tells Maxim, “I turned over a new leaf” — Rebecca, Dephne Du Maurier

In a moment gripping, Rebecca, an iconic creation of Daphne Du Maurier, in the novel by the same name, slices these words in a way so stark and sharp, that leaf, one of the softer elements of nature turns a knife pierced through an insecure husband’s heart.

If you are in the business of writing, it’s unlikely that you have not come across Rebecca. Still, if you need a re-hash, find the pdf here.

That’s pen power turning nature elements into literature classics.

In one of his famous short stories The Last Leaf, O’ Henry used ‘Leaf’ as a protagonist, symbolising hope and quenching creative thirst.

It is a story of Johnsy, a poor young woman who is critically ill with pneumonia. She believes that when the ivy vine on the wall outside her window would lose all its leaves, she would die too. However, her neighbour, Behrman, a struggling artist, tricks her by painting a leaf on the wall. Johnsy recovers but Behrman dies of contracting pneumonia from the night he spent painting ,in rain and cold, his one and only masterpiece: The Last Leaf.

Probably the most poetic use of leaf in the history of literature

We take a leaf from someone’s book and is inspired to turn over a new leaf, but not handed with four-leaf clover may shake like a leaf and run for the fig leaf for cover.

Thus, leaves lend their essence to create Idioms ,which form the underlying fabric of the concept of “to be read between the lines”, in literature.

Leafing Facts:

How silently they tumble down And come to rest upon the ground To lay a carpet, rich and rare, Beneath the trees without a care, Content to sleep, their work well done, Colors gleaming in the sun. At other times, they wildly fly Until they nearly reach the sky. Twisting, turning through the air Till all the trees stand stark and bare. Exhausted, drop to earth below To wait, like children, for the snow.

— Leaves, by Elsie N. Brady

A leaf is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, while the leaves, stem, flower, and fruit collectively form the shoot system. In most leaves, the primary photosynthetic tissue is the palisade mesophyll and is located on the upper side of the blade or lamina of the leaf but in some species, including the mature foliage of Eucalyptus, palisade mesophyll is present on both sides and the leaves are said to be iso-bilateral. Most leaves are flattened and have distinct upper (adaxial) and lower (abaxial) surfaces that differ in color, hairiness, the number of stomata (pores that intake and output gases), the amount and structure of epicuticular wax and other features.

Perennial leaves whose leaves are shed annually are said to have deciduous leaves, while leaves that remain through winter are evergreens. Leaves attached to stems by stalks (known as petioles) are called petiolate, and if attached directly to the stem with no petiole they are called sessile.

• Ferns have fronds.
• Conifer leaves are typically needle- or awl-shaped or scale-like, they are usually evergreen, but can sometimes be deciduous. Usually, they have a single vein.
• Flowering plant (Angiosperm) leaves: the standard form includes stipules, a petiole, and a lamina.
• Lycophytes have microphylls.
• Sheath leaves are the type found in most grasses and many other monocots.
• Other specialized leaves include those of Nepenthes, a pitcher plant.

Dicot leaves have blades with pinnate vegetation (where major veins diverge from one large mid-vein and have smaller connecting networks between them). Less commonly, dicot leaf blades may have palmate venation (several large veins diverging from petiole to leaf edges). Finally, some exhibit parallel venation.

Monocot leaves in temperate climates usually have narrow blades, and usually parallel venation converging at leaf tips or edges. Some also have pinnate venation.

Chlorophyll is the reason why leaves see green and is the pigment instrumental in carrying out Photosynthesis (plant metabolism system), though leaves can be non-green, variegated and shaped like flowers.

Leaf Culture: Olive and Laurel

Years do odd things to identity. What does it mean to say I am that child in the photograph at Kishamish in 1935? Might as well say I am the shadow of a leaf of the acacia tree felled seventy years ago moving on the page the child reads. Might as well say I am the words she read or the words I wrote in other years, flicker of shade and sunlight as the wind moves through the leaves. — Leaves by URSULA K. LE GUIN

Historically and mythologically, Leaves are symbols of Growth, Death, Rebirth, Fertility, Abundance, Healing, Peace, and victory. The story about Noah and the Ark ends when a dove comes back carrying an olive leaf, signifying that the great flood has ended and God’s anger is abated. In ancient Greece and Rome, headdresses made out of strings of laurel leaves were awarded to winners of competitions. A laurel is a shrub that was traditionally used to weave wreaths and crowns that were symbols of victory in the sporting events of Ancient Greece. Today, laurel is synonymous with achievement, and a laureate is one who an award or achievement is bestowed upon.

A life well spent is often rested on one’s laurel.

Leaves for keeps:

“A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn’t it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures?” ― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

If you are a quiet romantic like my mother, you must have collected leaves in various shapes and put them in between your journal or favourite book, they double up as page tags and when dried and brittle create a beautiful vein-art for keepsakes.

And if you are a health nerd, who diets on green leaves like me, you must be having a small herb corner, and leaves to be freshly plucked and done away with, just like this Curry plant I have👇 Leaves, new and green from the season awaits to be owned and used as a seasoning for my favourite Millet breakfast.

The aroma is to die for, for the leaves that steal your heart !

Healing Leaves:

I walk down the cobbled road, Corners strewn with crisp leaves Some rustling as my boot crushed them Like I crush my grieves.

I trample on the brown heap When the rustle turns a clamour As I walk along the cobbled road Their cry gives me pleasure.

One day as walking the path, I Saw a weaver bird, Plucking the rustling chips And flying to the tree near.

I wondered why it is In need of leaves so fallen and Brown, Then I found the little nest Nestled between the boughs.

The leaves I so crushed And found such pleasure, Build a home far afar When dealt with much care.

Then learnt the nature’s way To care the brown and fallen, To use our pain and sorrow To help see light again. — Rise-the-fall-way, by Author

Author’s Corner: I really enjoyed collating this article on leaves.I tried to cover every aspect of leaf in a written and sentient way. If you can think of any other way we can visualize leaf, please feel free to keep your thoughts in the comment box. I am sure its going to be an interesting thread on leaf !

Thank you Dr. Preeti Singh for such exciting Nature Prompts , helping us delve in nature a little deep. Thanking Yana Bostongirl and of course Sahil Patel for Reciprocal and this wonderful place for growth and reciprocity.

This leafy piece by Josephine Crispin makes a good case of their variation as per the change of season. Read her Here .

A tale of green energy by Joyce Nielsen talks about a nurturer’s mind. You can read it in I-crave-the-energy-and-color-of-green-leaves-in-my-life.

All plants are from my terrace garden, photograph Copyright Monoreena Acharjee Majumdar

Thank you every one for your time and visit. Much appreciated!

Of all the things leaves are capable of, they can’t sing.Right? Wrong. Check out this video and find out how !

Leaves, an inimitable component of nature, has been a source