A Pile of Leaves

Now here is a common story that happens in early October, on a clear, gorgeous Saturday, when whole neighbourhoods are out in their yards, stowing patio furniture, gardening tools, mowers, raking leaves into piles,

everyone, seemingly, pitching in, except for an adolescent son, lying on the deck, dreaming, occasionally teasing the cat with string and a small rubber ball, lost in a far place, a cat universe, who knows…

and a father who shouts to the son, Move! and the son who makes a pretense of rising, of lifting himself away from his play, but never quite getting to his feet, never getting to his chore,

never quite listening to the father who is bent to get fall clean-up done before the weather changes, before the snow comes, already, frost in the air,

the poplars and birch, once beautiful in their yellows and golds and touches of crimson, now standing naked, corpse-like, and ready for winter — and again the father yells at the son, Move! I said Move!

Do you recognize this story? the way the son looks at the father in affected confusion, as though the father is speaking Latin, the son again looking away, as though some breezy, heedless force is calling for aimless musing of such requests — and the father, shouting, echoing, as though to penetrate that force.

Memory is a pile of leaves, you can bury anything there, pain, shame — an image of a father, enraged, breaking a branch over the trunk of a tree, in the manner of a threat, an instant failure, a dismal spectacle,

and the image of a son, who lowers his eyes and picks up the rake, a final image of a father who turns to hide his face, a pulpy thing, a fading flush of blood — I’m sorry! — drop them in, cover them over with leaves,

until decades later, the grey-headed father, culling papers in his office, and a picture drops from the pile, of a teenage boy, running, laughing, launching himself into a pile of leaves, and a father, watching from the back deck — something like joy,

happy, just the way some stories can end, with the image of a father, sitting in a pile of papers and memories, his creased and stubbled face, smiling, his lined eyes, wet, and long forgiven.