I can see you.

Watching me.

Up there, nice and high,
too high for me to reach,
up there, within the trees.

Your voices whisper
like a flutter of an echo,
straining out to me.

Dear Leaves,
Are you afraid like me?
Is that why you cry out?
Are you calling, shouting for my help,
and I, just standing by,
deaf to your voices,
walk away without a thought?

Or are you calling to warn me
of some danger I should soon befall
in the thought that I am oblivious –
blind to it?

If it is the latter
then I wouldn’t worry –
I know the danger well enough;
I’ve lived it many times before –
and if it is the former
well then I have become
that which I despise
the most.

I wish that I could understand
what you are so desperately,
so urgently,
trying to say,
but I don’t know your tongue.

I wish I could decipher
the language of your thoughts.
Do you see your comrades fall
drifting to the ground
or perhaps torn viciously
by a hasty gust?
Do you watch them wilt away
to a crumbling brown,
drowning in dirt and mud
on the suffocating earth?

Are you afraid like me,
as you start to see the signs
of seasons changing once again?

Do you think of the long winter
that you will never see?
Do you think of the strange colors you’ll turn –
yellow, orange, and red?
And if so then do you like that –
how you turn a brilliant shade in your final hour,
how your last moments will be a spiral of beauty
and of awe?
Or does it seem a cruel sort of mockery
that you would be dressed by nature such,
right before you die –
like an elegant velvet dress
and red carpet to tread over
with tears streaming
down your face?

And am I simply ignorant to consider
it could be any other way?
Or is it wishful thinking,
hoping someday I might find that awe
as well?