ABSTRACT
The autumn wind is running hard today through the trees: long-needled pines, maples, and oaks, mostly, and the leaves are holding on, except for the occasional one which lets go and runs with the wind, for a moment, until gravity takes it down to the ground. How long will the other leaves hold on? In Wisconsin, where I live, winter is inevitable, inexorable, cold and clear, harsh, austere, fully beautiful in its different way-but it does not spare the leaves. And falling off the branch is part of being a leaf, isn’t it?
