And I have traveled along the contours
of leaves that have no name. Here
where the air is wet and the light is cool,
I feel what others are thinking and do not speak,
I know pleasure in the veins of a sugar maple,
I am living at the edge of a new leaf.
~Arthur Sze, from “The Shapes of Leaves” from The Redshifting Web: Poems.

…when it has been centuries
since you watched the sun set
or the rain fall, and the clouds,
drifting overhead, pass as flat
as anything on a postcard;
when, in the midst of these
everyday nightmares, you
understand that you could
wake up,
you could turn
and go back
to the last thing you
remember doing
with your whole heart:
that passionate kiss,
the brilliant drop of love
rolling along the tongue of a green leaf,
then you wake,
you stumble from your cave,
blinking in the sun,
naming every shadow
as it slips.
~Joyce Sutphen from “From Out the Cave”

Just like an autumn leaf, the skin on the back of my hand has a branching network of veins, like so many tributaries in a river delta. This connection between human circulation and a chlorophyll-driven photosynthesis factory suggests a mysteriously organized origin. We, formed as living breathing creatures, journey to our ultimate destination back to dust.

Together we emerge from the shadows, blinking at the bright sun, thriving under its light.

Maybe “turning over a new leaf” is for people like me who seem to be overly attracted to old leaves. For the moment, I travel along each falling leaf’s edge, in love with their colors and flaws and gradual fading transparency.

Our Creator God falls in love with each one of us for all the same reasons. He created us to live and breathe and flash brilliant in our journey, our veins flowing with gratitude for His Word and World.