Brown Leaves Blowing

image from the Internet

The last few mornings as I've walked along Main Street in Hudson, on my way to the coffee shop, I've noticed myriads of large brown leaves tumbling from north to south along the sidewalk. There are no large trees on the west side of Main (where I walk), so, of course, these leaves have blown across the street from the Village Green--and from nearby Aurora Street--where large, older trees do live and display their various incarnations to us as each year progresses: buds-leaves-turning, leaves-dropping, bareness for Old Man Winter, who gets just what he deserves.

I confess I'm not much of a naturalist, so I'm not sure what variety of tree dropped them. Around here, though, it's pretty safe to bet they're from a maple or an oak. Maybe a black walnut. (Ignorance is never bliss, by the way, as I'm rediscovering by typing these sentences.) I went to elementary school in a day before leaf collections became a staple assignment in science class--either that or I just neglected to do mine, a failure of which I was eminently capable in my boyhood. Why run around collecting leaves when there are baseballs to be thrown, basketballs to be dribbled and shot, Alamos to be saved?

In high school, our son had a biology collection to assemble--and, one day, going up the on-ramp to I-480, westbound, in Twinsburg, Joyce and I spotted a dead black snake alongside the road. We stopped (endearing ourselves to those who followed us), found a stick, picked up the snake, tossed him/her in the trunk, thereby earning our son a bio-class bonus. (If you're wondering, dead snakes do smell bad.) Oh, parents-doing-homework-for-their-kid! Shameful!

Pause while I think like a former English teacher.  The lead sentence in the previous paragraph could have been a wonderful example of a dangling participle if I had just written the sentence a little differently: ... going up the on-ramp to I-480 westbound, in Twinsburg, a dead black snake .... I kind of like that image: a dead black snake going up the on-ramp ... Sounds like a possible horror movie? I'll pitch it to Hollywood ... We've already had Black Snake Moan (2006) ... it's time for Black Snake up the On-Ramp!

So about those blowing leaves ... Those of us in the autumn of our lives see such things with different eyes. The leaves cause us to think about the homogeneity of the dead. Though people dear to us will moan (like a black snake!), perhaps, when we die, it won't be long--another generation? two?--before, to the living, we will become no more than brown leaves blowing down the sidewalk.

In 1809, William Godwin (Mary Shelley's father) published a little pamphlet/booklet called Essay on Sepulchres. In it, he proposed that England should establish markers for the graves of their notable dead. And publish the locations. (Has Find-a-Grave done all that for us?) And that the men and women of England should visit those places, often.

The former has surely been accomplished (England also has the "blue plaque" project--markers placed on buildings of historical or biographical note); the latter--the visits? I'm not so sure.

Joyce and I have often traveled to the graves of American literary figures--Hawthorne, Melville, Hemingway, O'Connor, Faulkner, Ellison, Irving, Fitzgerald, Poe, and on and on. We sometimes see a few other people there--but usually no one else. I'm pretty sure, though, that many fans of those writers do make the pilgrimage ... but maybe not. Probably not.

I think I've been to the grave of one of my maternal great-grandfathers a couple of times (near Youngstown)--and a few other relatives, now and then. But not too often. I tell myself, They aren't there; they are here (indicating my mind, my heart).

True, but ...

Fame, influence, notoriety, infamy--most of it is evanescent. There are exceptions: Homer, Shakespeare, George Washington, Adolf Hitler. We could compile very similar lists, I'm sure. But even they will one day disappear. Assuming we don't destroy ourselves in the next thousand years, do you think we will still be reading Shakespeare? Two thousand years? Five? A hundred?

Probably not. Those notables will by then have become like the rest of us--leaves on Main Street. Lovely and evocative, maybe--but pretty much indistinguishable.