Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

—Naomi Shihab Nye from “The Art of Disappearing”

•••

And they did.
She did. He did.
Tumbled into gone-ness.
Leaving us heart-heavy.
Leaving us.

Leaving
as the leaves do.

Impossible to imagine
now, when we see
the new ones leafing
greenly, at the beginning.

So chartreuse, reflecting
so much radiance;
we squint into sky blue
as we look up.

Not all will last till
autumn. Even the newest
can fall into what
feels to us like
end.

It is not;
they have transformed.
though into what
we cannot know.
We will one day,
too, of course,
even if we don’t
like to imagine it.

So we look up
into the abundance,
into the new.
We mourn.
We remember.
We miss the fallen.

We live leaf-like,
forever fragile.
We flutter in the breeze.
We live.