Molecules of Paint

As summer ends and chill descends, across the valley of the Cumberland, October woods of Tennessee display their dying colors, paints upon a palette, oils for another scene. Poplar, hickory, locust, maple, don their shades of yellow; while the oaks grow russet, red and crimson. Artistes of sassafras and sweetgum flash with shades of orange, yellow, brown and red, as if, not having ever died, they search like children for the way. From beneath the trees, each minute leaf, a spec of color, contributes to the forest hue, like a molecule of paint. In summer’s heat it gave its produce, strength to father tree. Now, with the planet’s lean to north, it feels the days grow short. Perhaps with sadness, it resignly knows the work that put it here is done. Just a final color show, and then it’s time to go. Soon I’ll see the vein-like patterns, cold and firm, of leafless trees, the strengths of leaves transferred to them, to height, to weight and wood, while tissue-thin remains decay like blueprints or like sketches. Faint lines transect the withered leaf where fluids carried nutrients to chlorophyll and sun, then hauled the workers’ product for the good of one great whole. A leaf records a picture, loosely drawn, of wood from which it falls, or plans from which a tree is made; I can’t precisely say. This one underneath my shoe mixes, as by artist’s brush, with other paint for something new.