Today, waiting on the schoolhouse steps, I saw something I had never seen before. My back against the warm brick wall, in happy prospect, I stared abstracted towards the red-orange of autumn on a tree. At the very center of my concentration was a single leaf; a torn yellow-green, not even red yet. But it fell. I saw the precise moment of release - the instant the leaf actually disconnected from the branch. It was the brevity of perfection. Partition in sunderance, an umbilicus severed, a future unlatched; an end and a beginning. …
