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Leaves hang like open pages of a book.

Torn, scalloped, yellow.  They narrate the history of a summer: the details of the weather and the signatures of a myriad tiny mouthparts taking their daily bread.  Give us this day, O tree. 

Sunrises and sunsets, the seasonal stain of molecular cycles, the winds and rains all written on the leaves of an epic. 

The wind whispers laments and moves the prairie bells to utter a rustling toll, a ritual dirge for their hero, Summer. 

They wait for death like saints in flaxen robes, silent and shivering, peaceful, hopeful.  They wait to be spirited loose by the hushed mourner and delivered, dancing slowly, down to their ancestor earth. 

A blanket they will make for her in thanks, a quilt sown from the warmth of spring.