The leaves, on this gray morning, are raining from the trees, racing each other to be not the last to fall on lawn and gravel driveway, on car roof and house roof and bird feeder roof. A wind, forecast to grow stronger yet, sweeps them from the branches, now nearly all barren save for a few low on the maples. Blizzards of yellow gust across the street, frantic, each leaf, not to be left behind. By day's end, autumn may well have reached its somber, naked terminal.
In one week, we give thanks for the harvest of leaves and roots, of stalks and fruits, even as we sweep and sweat to move this fallen foliage off the grass and to the curb in a ritual that defies nature's plan of rot and regeneration. A smarter folk would leave the leaves where they landed, smell their decomposition, witness their disappearance into compost, food for the future.