Letting Go With Intention

Outside my window a maple is slowly turning from green to dappled orange and red. I’ve been sitting each morning, coffee in hand, watching its autumn progress. I’m wondering if it’s correct to say that trees lose their leaves at this time of year. Maybe they intentionally let them go?

Maybe there’s a bunch on one branch that it couldn’t wait to get rid of, because they stuck out over the sidewalk and kids were jumping up and slapping them all Summer as they walked past on their way to the park. The kids may have intended it as a high five, but it sure didn’t feel that way. Maybe there’s a bunch way up at the top that it released with a rustle of remembered contentment, because those ones were high enough to see over the building across the street. They were the ones that witnessed all the sunsets, and were the last to feel the glow of its rays each day. The tree may think with sadness of some leaves that went to soon, whipped away by the force of an unexpected storm back in August. It may wish it had the chance to say goodbye.

Maybe things go like this, an ancient cyclical process that can inspire coffee-sipping humans if we’re open to it. Leaves grown in rough weather and on green and golden days, not lost, but mindfully released to gravity and pulled to wherever they’re called to rest, as they aren’t meant for the season ahead.