a lesson in leaves
Fall is the reminder that there is beauty in change. I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere. Humans are not meant to be static creatures. We are meant to grow. We are meant grapple with the new. We are meant to struggle and change and learn and move forward toward our dreams on the horizon, always out there in front of us.
There’s a line in a country song: if you’ve got a dream, chase it ‘cuz a dream won’t chase you back. The twang of the cuz conjures the pick up truck, the dusty boots, and the guitar slung across the cowboy’s back, his wake peppered by gravel, hesitancy, and ambition. Change and Dreams stand before him. And maybe it’s because of the twang that I’m haunted by that line.
A dream won’t chase you back. Instead, it hangs on that horizon, a perpetual reminder that we need to stay in motion. Time doesn’t stand still; nor should we. Change.
Lucille Clifton - fellow Buffalonian and poet extraordinaire - wrote “the lesson of the falling leaves.” — “the leaves believe/such letting go is love/such love is faith/such faith is grace/such grace is god/i agree with the leaves.”
And Langston Hughes, another fav, wrote, “Hold fast your dreams/For if dreams die/Life is a broken-winged bird/That cannot fly.”
Seems contradictory - how do you simultaneously let go and hold fast? But we do. We let go in order to love. We hold fast our dreams so that we might keep them alive to keep us moving toward them.
Langston Hughes also wrote, “I loved my friend./He went away from me./There’s nothing more to say./The poem ends,/Soft as it began - I loved my friend.” Beginnings and endings are bookends. He opens the door with love, and at the end, he echoes love again. But I can’t imagine it’s the same love. Not if the leaves have anything to do with it. It is stronger. It has grown. Like the leaves, let go to find faith, grace, and even god.
I know I get so wistful at goodbyes - summer is a favorite, and with tears in my throat, I am reluctant, I am sentimental, I am nostalgic. How I want so badly to hold fast, to walk in memories and simply linger. But the walk through autumn reminds me how important the journey itself is. Like the leaves, embrace the change, grow into the beauty that will follow. Continue to move forward into the adventure. Chase the dream. Trust the change it brings.
There is beauty in change. I, too, agree with the leaves.
