The Stowaway

Here's a stowaway from yesterday's deluge. It hitched a ride on the bottom of my shoe.

I was going to toss it outside, then looked more closely, saw the delicate veins exposed, their toughness implied, still there after sun and rain and footfall eroded the rest.

So I thought about this leaf skeleton, its fragile beauty, how easy it is to overlook what is cast our way. But how essential it is to stop, search and claim it for our own.