Bonnie Weidel, Poet and Volunteer Advisor to the Benicia Tree Foundation

As leaves on trees, we come and go,
our colors yellow, green or red,
our shapes and sizes
oval, pinnate, round.
We dance on the breeze,
we rustle in the wind,
we shade plants below.

As leaves we bud,
burst forth on limbs,
unruffle into space.
As leaves we hover
through hot summers
and together make a place
in which birds hide.

In autumn
all this service ends
and we let go our hold on life
crisply carpet grasses
or gather in gutters
stomped by boots
burned in bonfires.

Who knows which leaf
was first or last
or in what sequence they became
part of this great canopy
somehow it doesn’t matter
as together they salute the day
crowning with great mastery
inborne, inbred,
the complex of
a root, a trunk, a branch, a leaf–
a tree.