ICE CRYSTALS

"A BROWN LEAF"
a poem by Carol R. Ice

In the woods today a leaf fluttered down.
It was wrinkled and old and bent and brown.
But it met the wind and began to play,
And I watched it until it whirled away.
And I could but wonder, when time and grief
Should have made me old and bent as the leaf,
Would my heart be as young and full of glee
As the brown leaf playing in front of me?

{Published in The Garden of Life, 1995; reprinted in A Cloud of the Latter Rain, 1995.}