P/P Photoweek: Quaking Aspen Leaves (IX.3.2007)

THE ASPEN OF FORGETFULNESS

Some things we wish to remember; others, we'd rather
forget. The latter we'd prefer to see turn yellow and dry,
withering away till they fall like autumn leaves to the
ground, feeding the fertile humus of some common past
under our feet.

Descending a steep southern slope, I stop to rest a while
under an old doug-fir. The late-summer draw is dry, but sill
full of the lush green of quaking aspens.

Heart-shaped leaves on long, slender stems, some say
the most beautifully proportioned leaf of all deciduous trees,
their blades now quivering in the gentle afternoon wind like
the soft skin of a young woman first falling in love.

The sound of the leaves glistens with light-filled silences
between the green blades, the shape of the whole coming
in slow, easy waves that seem to say in a receding, ever-
softer echoing, "Let it go. Let it go. Let it go."

I look for a pen to write something down, which I can't find,
and then look at the new blank page I had ready. This I fold
up and put back into my pocket, as I shoulder my pack, stand
and start walking again down the hill, happy to have rested
a while among aspen and fir, and forgetting about all those
things in the past that now seem continents away, that I
really didn't intend to, didn't want to, really didn't need
to say.

Camp Lost & Found,
Eagle Cap Wilderness,
Oregon, VIII.17.2008