Fallen Leaf

Sitting, waiting for something to animate my fingers
where is the song to weave into even one word?
just silence, only silence sitting
so quietly on every key.

Leaves float gently down in the moonless night
I can hear them falling in the darkness
it is so quiet
where are their voices
telling their story
How each began as a tiny bud
grew, unfurled into summer
becoming this magnificent leaf
transmuting ethereal light into food
nourishing towering giants
hungrily reaching heavenward
with now barren fingers.

But they remain silent
not a word ever spoken
as they fall now lifeless
to the ground.

Only stillness –
even the air rushes quietly
aside as they fall.

The veil is so thin tonight
I feel my homeland calling
just a breath away
and yet so, so far away
beyond my feeble grasp.

There are those who can hear
those who can see
that which in my deafness
in my blindness
I cannot.

I feel the music playing
but am too deaf to hear
my fingers touch
but cannot paint the images my
eyes in their blindness will not see.

What curse is this to tease me so
taunt me with ambrosial nectar
and then pull it from my sight
just as the scent begins to lift me
skyward into celestial realms.

What chains me to this earth
why were my wings burned away
what sin was cause for my expulsion
from the celestial paradise I once sang in.

My ears do not hear
my eyes no longer see
my mind is frenzied
and I can no longer sing the music I feel.

Perhaps I too am spent
and will soon fall lifeless
silently into the earth.

How can I make sense
even of what I have seen
or touched
or heard
or felt
when my words are heard as so meaningless
and so unintelligible to any who walk this earth.

Perhaps that for which I search
the song that I feel
is not expressible in words
or thought
or song
or even feeling.

Perhaps it is not meant for eye
or ear
or mind
or heart
but only
like the leaves
to grow silently
and fall
upon the ground
to decay
and in its decomposition
to be the fertile soil
for something more.