Yellow-Veined Baby Grand Magnolia Leaf falls by me at Jane Lane, Rengstorff Ave, Mountain View

Yellow-Veined Leaf Sings "Hello"— the yellow-veined leaf falls on the bench where I wait for Bus #40 each day at the corner of Jane Lane, Rengstorff Ave, Mountain View. I sandwich this surprise treasure as keepsake in a book and learn it's from a Baby Grand Magnolia near the bench where leaves are dark green. This ovate leaf with acute tip is a mighty river branching out into rivulets, brooks, and streams— now it asks me to guess its name. I hear no Lorelei singing on the Rhine, nor loud chanting along the Ganges, nor cormorant fishing in the Li River, nor waltz tunes swaying in the Danube. But music is stirring in this leaf sounding like Smetana's Moldau— the Vltava starting as two small streams one warm, one cold, in the Bohemian Forest merging as one giant rapid running through Prague's eighteen bridges, its "wild water" passing woods and meadows ending up north in the Elbe. James Joyce cites thousands of rivers in Finnegans Wake, and this leaf sings its first line— "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's from swerve of shore to bend of bay"         Peter Y. Chou         Mountain View, 10-3-2017