The Rakers Lament

Fall is coming and going in a heartbeat and I am finding that once again I am thinking big, deep thoughts as I spend hours raking leaves. Very deep thoughts.

Sometimes a neighbors leaves blow onto my lawn.
Sometimes my leaves blow on to a neighbors lawn.
No big deal.

From the time spent raking I have contemplative time. Time to think on my life. Time to think about other people’s lives. Think about my marriage. Think anout my kids. Think.

Leaves fall every year.
They are God’s garbage.

Really I do not think about shit. I think about how much I hate raking. Last year when my kids (who were always useless rakers anyway) went away, or at least the boys went away I discovered something magical. I have a small patch of woods behind my house. Really just a bunch of over grown weeds with a few trees but hard to walk through and they provide a nice illusion of privacy in the summer. I also have a tarp back from 15 years ago when I thought it made sense to atach stuff to the top of the mini van and drive to Michigan (wrong). The magical thing was that instead of spending 5 bucks a bag for leaf bags and then stooping, stuffing and compacting leafs in these awful little bags that I could rake leaves onto the tarp, drag them back into the trees and dump them. I dumped so many last year that they were wase high and I went back there this fall with trepidation that there would be no room. But God had cleaned them up. There is something about leaf raking and knowing that I will wake up tomorrow and my lawn will be covered and there will be no evidence of my labor. Something Calvinistic. Something that speaks to the fleeting nature of all earthly achievement. Good Biblical stuff.

Insipidly Bad Leaf Poem With Worse Music: http://www.countrywhispers.com/autumnl/

So this year I am raking leaves again onto the tarp. Wet leaves because we had the rainiest October ever. The front yard got done yesterday. The Back today afyter the Ram’s game (and they are beating the horridly bad Detorit Lions). I wonder why one of America’s lions of poetry should write this bad of a poem that including the comparison of the leaf to being old.I guess it is just the typical fear of death that forces us to wax maudlin regarding the mundane.

And if I should live to be

The last leaf upon the tree

In the spring,
Let them smile,
as I do now,

At the old forsaken bough 
Where I cling.

The Last Leaf by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Seriously? I have to lean to Reagan on this one: "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do." -- Ronald Reagan, 1981 But wait, there is more from The Gipper: "A tree is a tree. How many more do you have to look at?" -- Ronald Reagan, 1966, opposing expansion of Redwood National Park as governor of California. I guess this is why Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck revere him as a gog (little g).

Thinking big thoughts like... "why is God angry with me?"