Drawing the Line

"But in the rising sun
You can feel your life begin
Universe at play inside your DNA
You're a billion years old today."
--George Harrison


This line occurred to me as I was raking leaves in our front yard. The primary culprit is a large red maple, whose multitudinous leaves are a sort of purple from spring to autumn, then fade to a pale brown, and fall to earth in copious amounts as winter approaches. I say "culprit" mostly in jest, because most days in most autumns I find joy and relaxation in raking leaves, or sometimes, a burst of macho enthusiasm if I get out my leaf blower and herd them into a large pile.

Either way I am reminded of the metaphor they provide of life and death. I can observe them coming to life each spring, watch as they reach their peak, and gather their dried remains once life has left them.

Or has it? Should the line be drawn at the point at which the leaves connect to the tree? Or is it the tree who is living, growing and shedding the leaves in season? Or is it the DNA that comprises the tree, which directs the way that collection of cells grows and takes shape? Or is it the earth that nourishes the tree, and finds expression sometimes in vast and beautiful forests, or in single landscaped trees, or even in the scraggly little "junk" trees that show up in almost every vacant lot or abandoned barn?

And then there's the life of the forest, large trees dominating, then dying, and their massive trunks falling to earth, where they decompose into softening brown heaps with their toadstool toppings and many mushrooms, all moving toward becoming the soil that, if left alone, nourishes and becomes more trees. including the smaller trees that, by nature or by chance, never tower above, but instead scrabble to find light in the places left open by their larger cousins, all of them ultimately becoming soil again, regardless of size or years of existence.

And of course I'm out there raking leaves around rocks that border the tree, those rocks being the cooled manifestation of long-ago (in human terms) volcanic or deep-earth heat and pressure, atoms and elements cooked and molded into mountains which wear into stones which sometimes fall into rivers where they are tumbled until their sharp edges round off.

And then there's the earth as a planet in the solar system that floats (if that's right word for drifting in the emptiness of space) at the edge of the Milky Way, and then the galaxies turning in the immeasurable immensity of the known universe.

And then there's me, standing in the autumnal sun, raking leaves and wondering at the passing of another season, and almost shivering in thoughts of the earthly and metaphysical winter to come, reminding myself that the me who feels the chill is but a particular manifestation of the cosmic dance around me.