Offerings

And how does a tree offer its leaf to the earth? All withered.

Worn
Neon and naked with dead parts showing?
Look at me! Don’t stare!

Simultaneously as it shudders in the breeze...

Those fire reds and sunburst oranges were there all along, hidden beneath the cool and confident green, long gone now in the quickening toward night.

Yes, how does a tree offer up its leaves so courageously brought forth as tiny, hopeful buds - enduring frosts in a fickle spring, with nothing promised?
Those leaves that radiated solar life force to the very core of the tree itself, growing the heartwood and sweetening the sap in a most beautiful contraction; only witches might whisper of the vibration and pulsing it gave at midsummer when all were woozy and hot with the glory of life.

Yes, how does the tree release each and everyone, in its own precise timing... One as a bow to the squirrel that often visits
Another as a prayer for the dormant wildflower bulb far down below,

And yet more and more still as an offering to the mycelium and earthworms... It never says
You should have seen me at my best... I’m too old now.
Instead, it exalts in its perfect decay and cackles wildly knowing of its new creation... the fertile dark, where all dreams are born and seeds, like birthing stars, lay silently waiting to be exploded open and begin to burst forth a new light giving root...