Do the leaves remember those from last year?
In the heat of summer, the bright green shimmers of forever.
Then the fall.
The bitter cold.
They show their true colors,
these elders.
They remind us of the passage into the next life.
The commonest of them persist
And they speak to me
They tell me I am one of them.
In the Spirit of Medicine features the essays of Dr. Arne Vainio, an enrolled member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and a family practice doctor on the Fond Du Lac reservation in Cloquet. His essays on life, work, medicine, and spirit are published in News from Indian Country and you can find the link to this story here.
