Donovan Kelly

What else is a leaf pile for?

The next morning, the leaf pile looked beat. As did grandpaw. Too much being jumped on by rambunctious grandchildren had left behind that morning after, trampled down, tired feeling. The leaf pile felt the same way. Paw could be revived by coffee and the happy thoughts of more jumping children to come. The leaf pile, not so much.

As the coffee revved up Paw, the frosty morning dew depressed the leaves even more and drove them ever closer to joining that great compost pile in the sky. Only active raking would fluff the leaves to a more bouncing, jump-enticing vigor. So Paw ventured out with a rakish strut into the autumn chill to fluff and nourish his leaves back into child-enticing full leaf pileness.

“We want a giant pile,” the three-year-old had said. “Giant pile it will be,” Paw said aloud to the trees that still clutched a few leaves against their coming winter nakedness. He commanded the trees to give unto the pile and verily they did, reluctant as all summer hoarders are, but give they did in ones and twos.

One sad newly fallen leaf stood out because it didn’t. Other leaves showed off the bright reds and golds that were all the rage. The sad leaf showed brown and not a very pretty shade of brown. More a tattered dishwater gray brown, an exact match to Paw’s thinning hair.

“Twang, twang” went his metal rake, grabbing the few newly fallen, the fluffiest remaining leaves, to sprinkle across the top of the sullen pile. The twang also drew a neighbor, who shook his head at the sight of the old man raking.

“You should just mulch the leaves up with your lawnmower. Raking is too much like work,” the wise neighbor said and even offered to run his own monster mulching mowing machine over the whole yard. “Only take a minute,” he added, with the knowing look of a prophet offering to lead the old and clueless into the promised land of roaring yard machines and perfect leaf-free lawns.

“But without the leaves, what would kids jump in?” Paw asked, with the look of the dinosaur who sees but chooses to ignore the coming of the new age that will end his slow puttering kind.

With the look of the dinosaur who cannot give up his ways, not just yet, not when there is one last leaf pile to jump in with rambunctious kids. Only to end up flattened, exhausted and not so fluffy anymore. The leaf pile too. But isn’t that what Paws and leaves are for?

(Kelly and his leaves write from Hamilton, Va., and hide out at donovan@donovanwrites.com.)