​POETRY  

"You are flat on your back,
lying on the ground with many others."

                               Photo by Weebly.com                                    

Dead Leaf
​(A Prose Poem)
by Barbara Applegate

​​You are flat on your back, lying on the ground with many others. Yes, your mother disconnected you from her lifeline twig where you were born and have spent your entire life up to now. Yes, she nourished you with her life-giving juices and she protected you from the winds and the rains, but in the end, she let you go! And you fell, floating through the air, fluttering by an evergreen bush, and you landed on the ground. You lay there in shock. What has just happened? Why did your mother abandon you? Why did she let you fall to the earth and die? These are the thoughts that run through your mind as you lie on the ground.
 
You look around and see many familiar faces—your brothers and sisters that your mother has abandoned in the same way she abandoned you. Of course, you realize now that you are all dead. You feel very sad to be dead. You feel lonely. You lay where you fell, dead, and suddenly it is very dark, and you are smashed and torn into pieces. A hiker has stepped on you! Many hikers step on you. Dogs step on you. Deer step on you. And raccoons. You fall apart. Your pieces decompose and you blend into the soil. You become soil. It is dark and lonely. You are sad. But after a time, you feel a seed fall on you and you welcome it with open arms. You are no longer alone! You nourish the seed and see it sprout an arm that reaches up into the air. You watch as it grows roots that reach down and you caress them. You observe how the seed’s arm grows up and sprouts leaves. And you realize, after all, you are not dead!

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​​Barbara Applegate received a BA at UC Berkeley, with a major in Spanish, and an MS in Education at CSU, East Bay. As an administrator of Early Childhood Education, she developed a program to teach parents in non-English speaking families the value of helping their children retain the home language while learning English. She is the mother of 3 daughters, a traveler and a contemplative. She loves taking writing classes - not only because she learns from them, but because they give her structure for writing.

Other works in this issue:
Poetry:
​Ocean Beach
Photo Essay:
Signs of San Francisco
Inside OLLI: 
Interview with Ana Linder - OLLI Hiking Group

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