Leaves Of Wrath

Oh how we carried on about the splendor they bestowed on the fall. Now nobody wants to get near them.

One neighbor uses a blower to dispatch them - to the yard next door. Another sets a pile out in the road for incoming cars to broadcast. A third stashes them among the brush on an otherwise empty lot - under cover of night. Don't even think about burning them.

There wasn't a peep about overhanging limbs when shade was all the rage. Now one encroaching twig and the Joneses hold you accountable for anything that falls beneath it - within one square mile at least.

What's with the impulse to tidy up every natural bit of dishevelment anyway? Would the universe implode if we just let the leaves blow this way and that, catching in clusters around stones and sticks, mums and daisies, tree trunks and trash?

Live and let leave! Or, as The Beatles would have it, leave it be.