the leaves that are green

art by Chris Appelhans

It has been a year defined by loss. If turning twenty had meant, as I suggested rather inarticulately a year ago, taking from the Tree of Life - I can say with fairness that I was not the least bit mistaken.

I'm not saying that things transpired in the way they should have; nor do I lay claim to being portentous. It had to happen; it was only the extent of which that caught me by surprise. It all goes to show, I think, that life makes a mess of things when you least expect or want it to. It is precisely when we seem just about having come to terms with it when it insists on being difficult. But that in itself lends no cause to unhappiness.

----
The hale of green youth freely discovers and acquires, and we ascribe meaning unto each new gift of life. The experience stays; the gifts go. So dawn goes down to day; nothing gold can stay. We know this, but we never realise it; to do so would mean that we have taken leave of youth.

Yet that in itself is no loss. And I refuse to believe otherwise.

What does it matter? The value of what one has is immaterial to one's enjoyment of it. I freely acknowledge what is gained and lost, but its abundance or paucity has no bearing on what I make of it.

So to myself I say: Grow like the leaves! Till you are coloured by the seasons, and the fullness of your days.

Let the winds come and the seasons change. In every moment, let there be a happiness with each sorrow. In every song, a greeting with each goodbye. In every breath, new life after death.

I think it's going to be a great twenty-first. And no one shall tell me otherwise.

----
I was twenty years when I wrote this song
I'm twenty-one now but I won't be for long
Time hurries on
And the leaves that are green turn to brown.

And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand

Once my heart was filled with the love of a girl
I held her close, but she faded in the night
Like a poem I meant to write
And the leaves that are green turn to brown.

And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand

I threw a pebble in a brook
And watched the ripples run away
And they never made a sound
And the leaves that are green turned to brown.

And they wither with the wind,
And they crumble in your hand

Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello,
Good-bye, Good-bye, Good-bye, Good-bye,
That's all there is
And the leaves that are green turned to brown.

-- Simon and Garfunkel, "Leaves That Are Green"


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