My Front Lawn Puzzle

My Front Lawn Puzzle

Rustle, crumple, scuttle, and crunch-

my leaves are piled up high in a bunch.

The wind it tosses, sends heaps and it whirls

the withered leaves around my feet, they curl.

The leaves they dance, drift, shrink, and spill,

the rattling rake corrals them all-still;

pushed this away and pulled, way off on the side,

I did drive them down deep in an effort to hide--

but mountain wind and upward air

have let them loose and I’m unaware

of the conspiracy

of my lawn-ward leaves

to pile themselves high,

right up to my sleeves.

I hear myself heave out a sigh,

as I spy them there-now, about nine to ten feet high.

What once was swept is now, not clean.

These rustling leaves are spiteful-mean.

Yet, I love the fall and how it toils and it plays

with piles of leaves for weeks and for days.

Their crazy colors so delight my soul

that I long to knit them all up in a bow

and fashion a chain to ’round and then down go,

alternating with color of a most fiery glow.

Red--autumn’s most ostentatious color,

anointing us with her ‘pop’ and ‘zing,’

she can sure sing of a rockin’ autumn—she’s won the prize.

Folks, she’s cut all others right down to their size.

And the overhead gala, a leafy canopy of fun—

it makes all my senses just get up and run.

Sugary yellow, orange, green and brown-

all glittering jewels

in Boone’s forest crown.

They are lazy,

crazy, psychedelic leaves

all piling up and even tugging

my sleeve, yet somehow

strewn , splattered and now spread--

a heaping mosaic that plays with my head.

My front lawn puzzle of painted leaf-gem,

I will rework and then work you again.