RAKING

My right hand clasps the tip of the handle
As if holding a ladle, ready to stir the pot
My left rests about the middle of the stick
And I am ready to begin.
I drop the tines on unsuspecting leaves
Some escaping the vicious steel with the help of the wind.

I lift
And drop
And pull

The captured leaves shaking their way to the pile

I lift
And drop
And pull

Each stroke, a thought
The mortgage is three months over due
How do I explain it to Chase Manhattan?

lift
drop
pull

My list is tedious.
The unfinished poems
Undone hems and unsewn buttons.

The soil is drunk with manure.
And I get drunk with it.

The pile is now a mountain
I must pick up all the leaves
Leaving no trace
Making sure I do not crack them to pieces
difficult for a gap-toothed rake to pick up

The tree shakes off more leaves
As though expressing a desire for a communal burial for its dead.

I pause.
The six o'clock bells of Santa Monica call for the Angelus

behold the handmaid of the Lord

And then I run the rake across the lawn again
Going around the tree’s heaving roots
I sigh when all the leaves are gathered
All I have to do now
is to move the mountain into the bin.