“Leaf Dance” by K. Rummer, 2022
Wind swirl and leaf dance
From the study window
by Ken Rummer
***
The leaves are dancing today. It’s mostly a circle dance just off the southwest corner of the church, but from time to time there are skips and even high jumps as the winter-brown leaves whirl and spin to a music I can’t hear.
From the looks of them, they are mostly oak leaves, the ones that held on through the winter. They are down now, freeze-dried and brittle. They look dead to the world, but in a moment they are up and dancing, joined by a scrap of plastic window-wrap.
A row of leaves are sitting this one out along the wall, just as I remember from Junior High long ago.
What prompts the dance? The answer is not in sight. Some invisible DJ spins another tune and the leaves are off again, swirling and twirling, up and up, higher and higher, five feet off the ground, ten feet, even twenty. It’s something to see.
A few of the leaves came into church today. I wasn’t there to greet them or give them a bulletin, but I heard the doors open with a rustling, and when I passed that way, the leaves had assembled on the entry mats.
In addition to the oak leaves, I spotted several from the burning bush, and a couple shaped like stone arrowheads with a toothed edge. Most were a little worse for wear – torn, bent, parts missing. But they made it in the door, and that’s something.
I don’t know if they’ll stay for Sunday. Ezekiel felt called to preach to the dry bones (Ezekiel 37), but so far I haven’t sensed a call to preach to the dry leaves. Maybe they’re here to preach to me.
Another flock of leaves just flew past along the alley. They seemed in a hurry, but then, who isn’t?
Meanwhile the dance continues outside my office window with leaves spiraling and rising, and scritching the cement like soft-shoe vaudevillians. Who invites them to abandon their fallen places and take a turn on the dance floor? I have my theories, but there is no one in sight.
The leaves that raced by earlier are back and have joined the dance, along with a cast-off tissue box. The swirling circle is getting bigger, and even some of the wall-flower leaves have been coaxed out on the floor – scooting, spinning, soaring.
It looks like fun, but the admission price is steep. To let go of greenness and familiar branch and to fall into emptiness … who’s ready for that?
But then, to be lifted up by an unseen partner, and twirled and turned and floated high … from what I’ve seen of the leaves, if asked to dance, I think I might say yes.
(One last leaf, holding on for dear life. That image from Donna Frischknecht’s reflection (Look All Around, Grace Abounds, October 16, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHoZx-Mnrkg) is what drew me back to a newspaper column I wrote in March of 2005. It’s one of my favorites, and it’s why I brought it out of retirement (with a few tweaks) to share with you.)
Ken Rummer, Teaching Elder PCUSA, Honorably Retired
Ken Rummer writes about life and faith from the middle of Iowa by the High Trestle Trail. Previous posts are available at http://presbyterianmission.org/today/author/krummer.