Come, Little Leaves

Inside an envelope of little things I drew and wrote as a child, kept tucked away in an attic by my father for years before his death, is a poem.  It is written on tablet paper - the kind with wide lines for us little ones just learning to write in 2nd grade.  Written in pencil, the letters carefully drawn, each page softly highlighted with orange crayon and little leaves scattered across the pages (I know they are leaves because the poem is about leaves...I never could draw, not even a stickman. I'm sure I got an "E" for effort..)  I miss him, my dad.  Especially now.  I love you, daddy.

"Come Little Leaves"

Come little leaves, said the wind one day,
Come, over the meadows with me and play:
Put on your dresses of red and gold,
For summer is gone and the days grow cold.
Soon as the leaves heard the wind's loud call,
Down they come fluttering, one and all;
Over the brown fields they danced and flew,
Singing the soft little songs they knew.
Dancing and whirling, the little leaves went;
Winter had calling them and they were content;
Soon, fast asleep in their earthy beds,
The snow laid a coverlid over their heads.

(a bare tree, a 3-window brown cabin with smoke coming from the chimney, skyblue background, and a snowman holding a shovel adorn the last page...all drawn and colored very carefully by one little girl who loved her dad very very much)

6:31:20 PM     

"Words were all he knew; they possessed and overwhelmed him, as if they were a thousand white cats with whom he shared a one-bedroom apartment. (In fact, he did not like cats, because they could not talk and would not listen.)"
-from Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

6:01:12 PM