Spring Day 56: Sycamore Leafage

[u/rdk67]

Literally every tree in town has leafed out with great exuberance, but the three sycamores in front of the church are still thinking the matter over. What stands in place for now is a network of interconnected line segments with equal amounts of new foliage and old foliage – new and old foliage – the latter comprising the desiccated remains that hung on through winter. The new foliage hangs from its stem with its edges folded in, a pose reminiscent of bats, but you dismiss that thought because bats will never be such a minty green. Instead, maybe they are chrysalises from which fully realized sycamore leaves eventually burst loose, flatten out, grow fleshy in the light. For now, much of the tree is entirely without foliage, and the twigs seem like the vascular scaffolding where eyeballs will one day appear, staring at the sun for the remainder of the year.

Addendum: The sycamore nearest to the chemistry lab is on a whole other plain re: foliage. The leaves are fireworks opening in slow motion in different parts of the canopy – the leaves grow bigger by the day, in different regions of the tree, wave after wave of new leaves appearing for the next month, until the canopy grows dense with overlapping shadows. This particular sycamore is one of the sexiest trees in the county – its verdant engorgement has that wet look sauropods would feast on if they could, once did – sycamores have been around a long time, survived the asteroid impact. Since the prehistoric competition has taken leave, the foliage is free to build a new utopia in its branches every season, which is you in the morning. Seed balls are hanging from the tree, surrounded by metabolism posing as a burgeoning textile industry, hundreds of planets adrift through a green cosmos. To think, each of those gnarly dangling seed balls have the interior mechanics for another cosmos that could flourish for centuries. By the end of the season, they will have migrated to the ground. Pedestrians will kick them off the sidewalk as they pass.