and so it goes...

high atop the highest maple in the park, a leaf reaches the late summer of her life.

throughout her existence, she has clung to the uppermost branches of her tree; safe, protected, secure. but deep inside her she knows this is not living; and so, brushed by the gentlest hush of the breeze against her skin, the leaf lets go, and casts herself out on the fickle winds of fate. the ochers, crimsons and plums that were her future are now her past, and she consigns herself to the wind, knowing no other way to be....

tossed and turned in the breeze, she bumps up against rocks, stones, trees.... the immovable fates that litter the world, and with each twist and tango she is left bruised, banged and bedraggled... yet onwards through life she blows.

the wind that bears her is as sweet and warm as honey, and it carries her far, far from home... and terrifying though the journey is, she is mere flotsam borne on the currents of time, and content in her place.

the wind lurches and humps along, at once a bear and a catterpillar, and far below her curls the lazy river, its feet propped up on the muddy banks of autumn. downwards she drifts; the loamy scent of the flood plain filling her until that seminal, delicate, dizzying moment when her skin slicks against the surface of the stream, and like the woman of whom she dreams, she floats down the turgid river and falls into love.......