Georgia Abdow
April 16, 2014
Leaf
The amount of time spent on the future is extraordinarily obscene,
as we wait for the leaves to go from a verdant green to a crisp orange red.
Time slows down and we are eager for the next move.
You plan it out in your head as a fairytale scene but it never turns out as you would have liked.
It seems like that orange leaf will never fall to the ground.
But for now it’s just complacently resting on that oak tree branch.
Why paragraph:
This poem that I wrote speaks to my inability to live in the present. I have a very strong interest in why people are constantly waiting for things to happen in the future. While I wonder this about other people and myself, I can’t seem to break the habit. I chose to use a metaphor about leaves changing color and falling off a branch. I was inspired by the saying “its like watching grass grow.” This is how I feel when I am waiting for something to be done with, and waiting for the next exciting event to happen in my life. Time seems to slow when you want something to be over, hence the metaphor of the leaves changing color. I think the most important line of the poem is the end where I switch to the idea that people should live in the present. The whole poem until then consists of the constant waiting for the future, but when I say “But for now its’ [the leaf] just complacently resting on that oak tree branch” implies that now is the present and people should enjoy that. I chose the tone of the poem to be peaceful by including imagery of nature. I feel like being in nature forces me to be in the present because it is so simplistic and nice. By using this tone for my poem, I convey the idea that it is okay to wait for future things to happen, but it is even nicer to just be able to live in the present. I chose to use this photo because it is in slow motion. It shows the idea that time goes by really slow when waiting, which is just another reason to live in the present.
English5thAnthology 