Blows

Something led me to begin raking the back lawn with my rake late this afternoon. As I raked, the scent of decaying leaves rose on the soft air, as did the scent of revealed lawn, damp where dew had hidden from the sun since morning. The metal rake vibrated and sang and made the leaves rustle, and scratched the ground with a sound as satisfying as a scratched itch. I could still hear bird calls, and a dog barking a block or so away, and the cars that occasionally passed to and from wherever.

Then sinister neighbor came out of his house and began blowing his yard with his power blower. The air filled with carbon monoxide stench and with clouds of dust, and all sound but that of the blower motor was drowned out. So I put down the rake and went inside leaving the lawn half heaped with leaves and half bare of them. I closed my windows against the blower stench and the dust. Sinister neighbor rid both his yard and rooftop of leaves with about half an hour of steady blowing. Raking the remainder of my yard (the same size as his) will probably take three hours. Totally worth it to spew no blower fumes. The remaining raking will have to wait for another day, though, there being no daylight left to this one.


Gray kitty appeared about seven o'clock and began napping in the back porch chair he favors. I wonder that a cat who flees when a person comes within twenty feet of him outdoors will calmly go to sleep after seeing me moving about in my kitchen not ten feet from him. Maybe he thinks the kitchen is like a fish tank and I can't get out. Kitties are odd.


( Sunday Verse )