Leaves

I cleared them. Honest I did. On Tuesday. Before the son came home. And the sun was shining and the colors were bright and the leaves like paper plates all shapes and sizes flittered in the breeze. And drifted from trees.

When they told me books had leaves I wondered why the pages don't crack. But I was younger them, and I'm digressing. Still, paper's made from trees.

California son was impressed by the sun and pleased that Oregon obliged by not being wet, till it rained the next day. Then leaves, like sodden layers of spider-silk, like teeming nests of bugs, dead and alive, like slime that oozed from the Black Lagoon, dripped murkily down on the ground.

I cleared the sludge and detritus again into piles that lie by the road. As long as the fence and half as high, wet leaves and feasters on leaves, but at least it was dark so I couldn't see them crawl and the wind wasn't blowing.

Now I'll leaf my way through pages in books and try to stop looking spiders that flash by my eyes. Fat spiders. Hungry spiders. Evil, black-eyed crawling spiders that are feasting on leaves of my dreams.

But I cleared them. I did. Till the next lot fall.