Summer's Shroud

Yesterday I finished cleaning up the garden and putting away all the summer yard furniture. The table and chairs on the porch were marked by the leaves that had fallen. They are gone now, but they have left their imprint behind. Like the Shroud of Turin, the surfaces still bear the shape of that which was alive and green. Look closely and you can see summer -- even though it is snowing this morning and another kind of shroud will soon wrap the earth. But the promise is in the images that remain, and the promise points to another summer yet to come, to the life of the leaves that remains behind now to nourish the earth with rich humus, the promise of summer waiting underneath the wrappings of winter.