By: Nibir Mriduta Konwar
(Picture source)
As the crayon-painted leaf took the pain of breaking off from the stem as magical as the wand of a fairy, slowly sliding, with the last touch of his beloved branch, all the Maple leaf could do was see himself in those ways of an artist, at his lively emerald body that withered like the petals of a blood-red rose! He sings his favorite lullabies sitting on the grass, sending his autumnal tunes to the dew drops that adorn the beauty of the greenery.
It was devastating for him to lie weak, withered and pale, and still splash colors and reflect the beauty of a thousand rays of auburn to the multitudes that witness the onset of Autumn! When the babies of Spring, all clad in hues of green, celebrate the act of ‘letting go’, and blissfully see themselves dress up in threads of faded browns losing their sun kissed green shades — considered the most beautiful thing in this whole wide world.
He has been sculpted like a painter and painted like a sculptor. All the poetry is for him, for the dead Maple leaf, the thousand stanzas that a poet creates is just for him, the innumerable colors of life, of celebration, of sacrifice, that a painter’s brush creates, is for him. It is for the withered, surrendered, dead Maple leaf.
Do you see how beautiful he must be to be dead and yet be the muse of an artist?
And do you not see how beautifully he embraces death, and chooses to fall off and not blame Autumn?
That is how Autumn is. Everything is like a beautiful corpse. A ‘corpse’, yet, alluring… Letting go never seemed this breathtakingly beautiful if it weren’t for Autumn. To all the songs of autumn, created in the branches of the River Birches which scream the synonyms of parting, to the Sweetgum trees that merrily taken rounds of, the end of the leaves’ life is so hard to embrace and accept, yet Autumn’s beautiful presence just stands out in all that pain.
Maybe we all are too blissfully preparing to die and color ourselves like those thousands lifeless leaves that get lost in the walks of time.
“I wish to see myself in colors that autumn brings upon the maple leaves.”
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