The mutant leaf

I was standing on my tiny back porch (more of a back step, really), mind wandering aimlessly as I smoked, and then I saw it. It's funny how your brain, or your senses, some mechanistic part of you, locks onto things before your consciousness catches up; like a dog that's caught the scent, waiting for his owner to catch up and assess the situation.
After I saw it I walked all around the rest of the tree to make sure; it's a little tree, not much more than 8 feet tall, and I can tell you, it's the only one. You can see the other normal leaves all around it; you can also see why the magic leaf would go unnoticed, because it doesn't look abnormal, in and of itself; doesn't look wrong, or irregular, ill-formed. So why?
One voting, block, I'm guessing, says: random genetic mutation.
Another: act of Almighty God.
Science and religion are quarreling lovers; overly bright, immature children. Let's bring them into the same room. I think this is a leaf-shaman, serving the tree. It performs a specific function, the tree needs it for some unseen, visionary purpose. Clearly it emanates from a different blueprint; clearly it is also green and firm, an accepted organ of the organism. Look at the way it communicates with the sun, in sharp rainbows.
It's totemic for me, it means something. I hauled myself out of bed with effort today, got up when I still wanted to be asleep; because, I've decided that my long love affair with the night has come to an impasse. A decision that I've been struggling with for quite a while, and that finally got made yesterday. It's just time; shifting desires and priorities mean that it's time for me to shift as well. It happens: here comes life, y'know. But structures of support make a difference. The magic leaf reminds me of the single sardine, years ago in the Monterey Bay Aquarium, who was swimming the opposite way. Thousands, tens of thousands of sardines in a clear cylinder that ran from floor to ceiling, all swimming in the same direction in the same circle, except for this one. Others would turn against the tide but be quickly corrected; but this one little sardine, I kept watching, and he kept quietly determining the rightness of his course of action.
So it's me and the sardine and the magic leaf, partners setting off down the road. We'll depend on your charity and kindness. The vastness of sky, and then we'll sit by the fire, and then we'll dream and we'll dream until the sun gently rises.