I watched a poor, withered small leaf hanging from its branch. There was no breeze blowing (that I could sense), yet it flitted as it hung, back and forth, back and forth, waiting for the moment when it would fall.
Of course, it wasn’t really waiting, but I imagined that within its decaying body the molecules felt within themselves the change of season, and of falling off. They sensed the water molecules that had given them life all summer disappearing.
As I watched, the leaf became still. In its stillness, as in its movement, its own awareness of itself changed.
Its own awareness of the wind that no one breathes, or the water that no one drinks, speaks truth to life, to death, to growth and decay, the beautiful and the sublime.