At dawn, the mild downpour slackened somewhat, but morning's light was slow to make an appearance. New leaves, lime-green, unfurled. Totally unaffected by the greediness of crows plotting to pilfer the crimson fruit of their mother, they explored with subtle wavering the still-dark air. It was motions like these that allowed the leaves to activate their newborn ears.

Across the avenue, past the iron fence painted black, feet shuffled. The leaves felt the agitation of strange creatures rushing from one place to another and listened to them muttering under their breath. A businessman, especially well-dressed, was thinking about his financial misfortunes in peculiarly audible way. The coarseness of the words seemed quite unbecoming to his appearance, thought the holly and the birch. The new leaves didn't think anything; they didn't know anything, but were likely to agree with their comrades.

The same man, his grey coat-flaps whirring, failed to see a younger woman in his warpath, and knocked the wooden box filled with fruit from her arms with an astonished grunt. "Terribly sorry," he kept repeating in variations, with the watery voice of one whose head is upside down. She said nothing, but looked at him accommodatingly, then reproachfully, in alternation — depending on whether he was meeting her eyes or not.

I would like to give this woman one of our berries, thought the new leaves, which was certainly a lime-green thing to think. Trees in the grove rustled in their equivalent of laughter. But of course, we were all naive once, said the poplar and the oak.

I find it always interesting to consider how we as individuals complete each other; for some writers, poetry is a challenge and prose a comfort. For me it is certainly the opposite. That isn't to say that I don't enjoy writing prose, simply that I have not practiced it nearly so much as I would like. As such, I have been endeavoring to consciously write something daily — some kind of vignette or momentary expression, at least — in the hopes that I will acquire gradually the courage to step up to short stories and even created worlds of novel-length.

I seem to have the proclivity to open up portals when I write; there is a desire to create crevices in my previous way of thinking and feeling, an optimism that this may open for me a deeper and richer world in which to live. Some of them appear to me with an immeasurable beauty, yet try as I might I cannot seem to open them to afford any more than the barest glimpse of what they contain. Others are occluded by apathy or angst. Still others, I cannot bear to look upon at all for fear of losing myself.