EXTINCTIONS
The city's coming around picking up all the leaves raked to the curbs. Aptly, the city is a big orange public works truck modified into a giant vacuum cleaner. A long black two-foot-wide hose swings from the nose sucking up all the leaves. It looks very much like the lone member of a previously thought extinct pachyderm. It's slow and annoying, lumbering down the street trunk swaying, sighing a creaky cry, perhaps pining for a mate. I curse the monster's timing. The whole house shudders as it approaches and passes, the ductwork rattling windows buzzing. The cats are bewildered and terrified--eyes wide, shoulders tensed, ready to duck to cover. But somehow my son remains napping throughout, having I'm sure some bizarre ur-dream of infancy.
The beast doesn't dally in front of my house, ho! no, finding little worth stopping to ingest, the stray morsels wind-whimmed there. I don't rake leaves. The yard is thickly matted with the burning fans of maples, but since the only trees on my property are a pair of hemlocks, I contend the leaves are not mine to rake. Besides, I know of a trick that spares me the effort. The annual cycles are always the same. Each autumn, the winds howl out of the north and blow mounds and heaps of dead leaves into my yard, where they stay all winter buried under the heavy snows. And always, finally, spring arrives, the snows melt, the winds shift to the south and all the damn leaves billow back home, rustling smack where they belong.