The Leaf
by Odin Roark

Modest assumption watched steadfast.
It was inevitable, it surmised,
He had finally grown up.

The window of the café
Steamed with mid-winter warmth,
A city-seclusion retreat,
The habitual comfort for many each day.

Cold beings filling the booths,
Coffee, wine, spirits, merry and mirth
Trying so hard,
Yet few bore happiness.

At the window booth sat such rare peace,
A man with a smile,
Someone who knew the price he’d paid,
A cost that had humbled him,
Yet left him alive with bursting pride.

Tonight…

His cup of coffee
Was like no other.
Tonight something happened:
All the years of getting here seemed behind him.
All the mistakes, finally understood as necessary.

How simple the stir of the cream he’d never tried,
Reminding him lessons stubbornly learned,
Eventually could actually “be” with the “other,”
That part of resistance that ultimately reveals
The yin and yang of everything that is,
Was,
And will always be,
Even cream with coffee.

So simple it seemed to him now,
So complex mere hours ago to understand.

Like a child
Admitting what he knew adults would laugh at,
Until they too wiped clear the foggy window.

It had been the leaf in transit, guiding him,
Floating from 5th Ave and 12th St. to 6th Ave and the drainage grill
Outside his window of vaporous vision,
The leaf’s journeyed river,
Needing to arrive here,
To be part of…

What?

An epiphany for him?

More cleanup for sanitation trucks?

Did it matter?

He sipped the coffee,
The cream he’d never tried before
Merged its whiteness with the blackness of comfort for so long.

But…

But…

There it was.
A simple leaf,
An innocent message of nature,
Telling him something,
Its gold and red shades conveying life’s oneness,
Resonating in the glow of a city’s street lamp,
Refusing to slip down the drain,
Knowing it had at least one more moment to share,
Before moving into the next iteration of its being.

Was it aware?
Did it know he was staring out at its struggle to hold on?
Was it delusional?
Was it…
Well…
You know… “off” like so many friends and doctors had suggested he was.

Or…

Were they both really ON.
Was he that rare breed of urban explorer,
Battered by social weather,
Pursued by humanoid predators,
Trying to evade their make believe,
Knowing deep within,
But fearful to reveal,
That belief in himself needed but a simple sign,
Like the defiant leaf refusing to succumb?

He paid his tab,
Stepped out into the downpour,
Lifted the leaf from the grating it so tenaciously clung to,
Considered which of the two books he continually carried
He’d ultimately commit it into;
Ram Dass’s “Be Here Now”

Or

Camus’ “The Guest.”

He stepped off into the rain,
Gently holding the leaf between his cupped hands,
Smiling anew.

It really didn’t matter which book.