So you take up the rake, run it through the grass over and over like a comb (this always makes your head feel itchy in a good way) and realize that no matter how much you rake, there will always be tangles and leaf bits stuck in the grass, and what after all is the point of getting every last one because tonight more will fall anyway, just as last night after you’d raked half the backyard, all the leaves on the neighbors’ mulberry tree realized, “hey, if we’re going to get bagged in time for the pickup on Tuesday we’ve gotta get ourselves on the ground tout de suite—no time to turn yellow now!” and tripped over each other onto the bare grass, forming a second layer of green like your grandmother’s jade-colored chiffon with its gauzy overskirt that you loved to dress up in because the sequined bodice made you look like you actually had a bust—so the point is not to get caught up in perfection, the point is to produce something, in this case several leaf piles which you attempt to stuff into bags in the fewest number of moves possible (unnecessary)—so you construct an embankment of twenty-seven paper bags from the True Value to line the edge of the front lawn, as if this is New Orleans and not Kalamazoo and the big storm is coming, and you’re praying like a little pig that this house of leaves and sticks is strong enough to protect you, all the while knowing that if the wind or the water or the wolf wants to get in, it will.