The Tenacious Leaf
Last week, I sent a bag of owl pellets to school with my daughter for the junior high biology teacher. His message back, through her, was, “Send more!” Knowing rain and snow were forecast, I bundled up against the biting cold morning breeze to gather more owl pellets in the name of junior high science.
The trees where the neighborhood great horned owls live are just a few steps from my backyard. This particular morning, I took a circuitous route to the owl trees. I followed a newly built path that crossed the creek and edged along a meadow, the gnarly old trees, and the creek underbrush.
All the trees were bare and felt even more so against the deep grayness of the pre-storm morning light. A tiny, brown leaf, near the top of the naked tree caught my eye as I paused on my chilly walk.
There she was, a single leaf still occupying her place at the top of an otherwise leafless oak. The leaf was vibrating in the cold, steady wind. As I took in this strangely captivating sight, I spotted one other brave leaf, still clinging to the memory of summer’s abundance. Something curious caught my attention: one leaf was battered back and forth by the wind, and the other, a few branches away, was entirely still.
It’s easy to stand on a windy day and feel the wind as wide and constant. But watching the two leaves that remained on that tree, I felt as if I could see the pattern of the wind. I was reminded that more is always happening than the eye can see. The wind patterns aren’t as straightforward as I might perceive.
As interesting as the wind pattern was, it was the leaf that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. That single, tenacious, wind-battered leaf—I felt it had a lesson to teach.
When something sparkles, but I can’t quite process the invitation or meaning I feel just below the surface, haiku crafting often helps. The 5,7,5 syllable form of haiku requires a distillation of essences. There is no room for extra words or ideas. The main idea must be discerned, understood, and clarified. Haiku is truly a smaller and deeper practice.
(I’ve written many posts on Haiku and my haiku “buddy” practice. You can read more about that here.)
My Learning the Lesson Haiku.
Single brown leaf said
While the others fall, I will
Feel the winter wind
And then I started to see the wisdom that single brown leaf had to share:
Tenacity. Tenacity is a “strength of will or a firmness of purpose.” May we all be tenacious like the leaf, doggedly holding onto our purpose when all around us are falling, and may we hold tight and say, “I want to see what the next season holds.”
How did that one leaf stay connected to her source when everything conspired for her to fall? She’s inspired me to hold on tight. While all the other leaves let go to dance once more in on the wind in October, she is holding tight in February, still feeling the breeze.
Hope. A leaf's connection to the branch can be easily broken, but this one leaf continues to hold, connected to her source. May this one tiny leaf, stubborn in the face of falling, show us that Hope looks like holding on, even when the wind blows, and every other leaf has fallen to become mulch.
A Collect* for Tenacity:
Maker of leaves and wind
Who whispers, “Perceive the story my creation has to tell.”
May we who walk your paths pause and glimpse
The story the leaves and wind have to tell.
The stories are there if we just have eyes to see.
Yes, leaves share.
*A collect is a traditional prayer written in five “folds.” According to Pádraig Ó Tuama in his book, Being Here-Prayers for Curiosity, Justice and Love, the format is: Address, Say More, Ask One Thing, Say More, End.
What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds by Jennifer Ackerman
This has been my “car audiobook” for the past weeks. I have long loved watching the owls in our neighborhood, and this book only increased my obsession with owls of all kinds. It was fun to listen to, but I wish I had read it because I know I missed interesting facts and stats. I’ve seen baby owls on tree branches and learned that “branching” is essential as birds learn to fly. I learned about crazy symbiotic nesting relationships between snakes and owls and the migration patterns of European owls. It was such a fun read, and it was the reason I started collecting owl pellets for junior high scientists. Maybe I can help ignite the passion of a future scientist!
Read each quote slowly, and notice if a word or phrase sparkles or catches your attention. Pause with that word or phrase, and see if there is an invitation for you to carry into your week.
“Whatever may be the tensions and the stresses of a particular day, there is always lurking close at hand the trailing beauty of forgotten joy or unremembered peace.”
― Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart
“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
“I am one of those who has no trouble imagining the sentient lives of trees, of their leaves in some fashion communicating or of the massy trunks and heavy branches knowing it is I who have come, as I always come, each morning, to walk beneath them, glad to be alive and glad to be there.”
― Mary Oliver, Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems
I love the idea of a Learning the Lesson haiku!
Ah, thanks friend! Let’s plan a real life tea soon?! I love watching and learning from you on here. 💕