Cars passed by,
near the pile of leaves, propped up in the ditch.
The gust of movement lifted one into the air;
finding itself aloft, it exclaimed,
in its network of veins,
what an urban view it had before it
and off it went to explore!

For the first time,
the leaf was drifting away from the tree that had birthed it from nothing,
whirling near the amazed head of a child, who, in play,
smacked it: the impact spun it around
and the leaf became more charming through this newfound motion—it was like a butterfly in flight.
But the child, unintentionally, crushed it,
in his eagerness to tie it to a string and send it skyward,
as he once had,
with a blue cloth kite, speckled with patches of pink and brown...

The veins left in its structure sparkled in the sun,
rustling like scraps of paper,
forgotten by schoolchildren in the cheerful halls of world peace.