The Falling Leaves by John RC Potter

November 10, 2023
Poem title: The Falling Leaves Poet name: John RC Potter Poem: The Falling Leaves, Leaves Falling The... Autumn is in the air. Leaves that fall, lives that fall, loves that fall and fail. The family tree, the fluttering leave. Trees fall; leaves fall; lives fail. There were nine leaves on that tree, but over the decades first one and then another loosened, let go, carried briefly on the breeze but for a too-short moment floated aloft, then plummeted and fell. Nine leaves, nine lives: oh, to be a cat! The first five leaves were not yet old, but dropped amongst the awaiting ground below. Trees are supposed to have long lives. but what about the leaves? Leaves become saplings and grow, for a time, and then become trees. 1996 - First the mother leaf. 1998 – Then the father leaf. 2013 – Then the youngest sapling leaf. 2021 – And yet another leaf dropped suddenly to the ground. 2022 – Then the fifth and oldest sapling leaf in freefall, hastening its descent to the ground. Four leaves remain on the tree, bracing themselves for yet another autumn. After the fall there will be winter all over again. Leaves that fall. Lives that fall. We fall... Souls that rise above the mist of a miraculous morning. And with our souls opening up even more wide. As we inch ever closer to the great divide. End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © John RC Potter John RC Potter is an international educator from Canada, living in Istanbul. He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, “Snowbound in the House of God” (Memoirist, May 2023). His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have been published in a range of magazines and journals, most recently in Blank Spaces, (“In Search of Alice Munro”, June 2023), Literary Yard (“She Got What She Deserved”, June 2023), Freedom Fiction (“The Mystery of the Dead-as-a-Doornail Author”, July 2023), The Serulian (“The Memory Box”, September 2023), and a book review in The Bosphorus Review of Books (Kenan Orhan’s, I Am My Country and Collected Stories, September 2023). The author has over a dozen upcoming publications in the coming months, including an essay in The Montreal Review. He is currently working on a novel-in-progress, Blood from a Stone, and has a children’s picture book scheduled for publication in the summer of 2024, The First Adventures of Walli and Magoo.