Taking Leave | Sagari Chhabra

My child asks, ‘when leaves fall do they cry?’
‘Not that I know’, I reply.
‘Then do they sigh?’
They rustle in the wind
and feed the microbes
invisible as a djinn.
They nourish the soil
in which the tree is grounded,
this is what in nature, is founded.
We are surrounded
by interbeing,
interlinked, without ever seeing.
The leaves do not die,
they only change appearances,
without so much as a sigh.
In the beginning it is seen,
the leaves are green;
then they turn
as they must,
into a burnished rust.
In their final descent,
they leave a fragrant legacy
for the living
and those that went.
The tree remains unbent,
It does not break or dry;
instead, it lends its leaves
to the earth,
and lets them lie.

Sagari Chhabra
2nd January 2022
New Delhi