Two Leaves That Look Like Me
I gave myself a lecture this morning: "You have far too much to do" I said most firmly, "and should limit your computer time today to the finishing of the test and labs for next week. Nobody much visits blogs on the weekend anyway, so give Fragments a rest." I wasn't happy, but agreed that this was a prudent plan.
But my feedreader button was just sitting there, unclicked for almost a week. I started at the top of the alphabet and darn if Marie Freeman didn't tempt me with her "leaf that looks like my dog" picture. Not that I have anything comparable--just a couple of frost-rimmed leaves here of no particular appeal at this resolution. Something has taken a big bite out of one of them. But through the microscope, every one of those little spots would appear as a teeming city of fungal threads already deconstructing last summer's solar panels, destined for complete recycling. It is a picture of compost hanging on the twig. By now, these leaves photographed a few days ago have hit the ground running. Make that rotting.
A little color. A short period of fading followed by shriveling. Abcission, then a short lilting tumble to cold earth, and a quick disappearing act. Who knows?
Released by fungi and bacteria as CO2, through the alchemy of photosynthesis, the carbons from this leaf could become part of next year's beans from our garden. I will eat the beans. They will become, momentarily, a part of me.
In a process called "cellular respiration" I will strip the energy from the bean starches that have taken up the leaf carbon. The term is misleading, but sparks my imagination. I can just see tiny cells exhaling a weeny puff of cell breath. Out in that puff go the carbons that once were leaf, then were bean, then were me. They travel in my blood like little commuters, holding on til then next stop:
The Lungs. End of the line. Watch your step as you exit, please. Off goes a carbon--a particle of soot--turned to gas, lofting, sailing, coming your way in the passing cold front.
Maybe this leaf that once was me will become a part of thee.
Comments
This reader is glad your discipline to blog overruled your discipline to slog ... through those labs and tests...
Posted by: Carl | October 29, 2005 9:18 AM
I come visit on the weekend!
Posted by: Melinama | October 29, 2005 9:27 AM
Dust thou art...........
Posted by: kenju | October 29, 2005 10:33 AM
I guess we both find inspiration to blog in the strangest places...I wish you could teach my daughter's biology class. Your imagery and metaphors are so much better than reading from the text book.
Posted by: Marie | October 29, 2005 11:03 AM
Very interesting! I'm glad you decided to blog today too. I read every day including weekends! Your faithful readers are glad Marie inspired you!!
Posted by: Rachel | October 29, 2005 2:43 PM
we are all recycled, and your post reminded me of this - a little bit of a poem
breath
vast comings and goings.
great tidal ins and outs,
mass transpiration
circling this orb on greedy drag of jet-streams
and the gentle wings of zephyrs.
breath
from my mouth to your mouth
great gifts given thoughtlessly:
my breath's caressed your pink and bubbling sacs;
I am intimate with you beyond imagining,
my gift transparent and without motive.
I take as thoughtlessly as I give.
as you take -- and give.
as he and she and they and those
take -- and give
in the reckless scant of life,
the ripening of fat mangoes;
in soft membranous flap of gill,
through sparkling rill and hollow's faithful cling
where grow such foreign, fleshy things
in thrash and meld of succulent structure;
the calling home of flocks to roost,
in pastures and in wolvish rowling howls;
thoughts fidgeting in pews and in
fingers dug so deep in soils all moist and cool,
life-death's perfumes commingling, darkly sweet.
I feel
the breath of nations flow;
creation knows I follow
with weightless thoughts wheresoe'er they go,
knowing no boundaries other than life and death.
breath
crosses o'er
and I know that I must breathe my last
before I breathe my first again;
that dying things expel their gusty last before
their lusty gasp of first again
and life flows on--
death follows on
and are but one as
breath,
both in and out,
follows on.
Posted by: circumsolar | October 30, 2005 6:02 AM
I think if you asked the average college student what they think Cellular Respiration is, they might tell you that it's what their parents need after they receive their cellphone bill and fall unconscious to the floor :)
Sean
Posted by: Sean Pecor | October 30, 2005 6:51 AM
Wow! If biology class had been THIS poetic, I believe I would have paid attention! I'll never be able to look at a cold front (or a hurricane for that matter) the same way again.
(Memo to self: Find a way to incorporate "weeny puffs" into my vocabulary.)(grins)
Posted by: M. Lawless | October 30, 2005 7:04 AM