Leaf Veins, Clustered Bubbles

This small leaf, bleached by sun and worn by water, clung quiet in the eddy of a waning late autumn river – still but for sunlight playing through the bony old man's hands of bare trees.

Traveling leaves make me wistful; caught in a world of exit, how would it feel to be warm and to grow, to push life through the vein, to become old and depart in a flurry, to grow thin in a strange place? Might we all feel the comfort of love, may we all feel the rush of touch and companionship.

I liked the globes of air, holding stillness like a sleeping infant, lenses into tiny branches of life. I made this photograph with a slightly narrowed focus, the corners fading slightly from view, into fog, into listlessness – into the colder days of winter.