We take a walk late in the afternoon, the trees still dripping from the rain. The best parts: the incredible images of color: flax, butter, ochre, copper, ruby red and the reflections of the trees, newly bare, in the water pooled in the street. Each day we lose more leaves, the village trucks collect bigger and bigger piles from the curbs on Thursday nights as we sleep.
The days when my father would stand on the street, an old fedora on his head, and burn the leafpile, are long gone. I see him, standing there, a cigarette in one hand, the leafsmoke filling our nostrils, as he raked and banked the fire while dusk slowly turned to night.
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