Thanks to our advance into autumn, the chokecherry bush at the front of my garage has been whittled down to the last one-hundred or so yellow leaves. I started to get an accurate count, but opted out when one of the leaves fell even as I was counting.
I am struck only now, as I
write this, by the peculiarity of counting the number of leaves remaining on a
bush.
I plead guilty to being peculiar.
At the same time, I treat
animals with respect. I regularly scrub
my toilet and shake my throw rugs. And I
try to make allowances for the mistakes of others as readily as I make them for
myself.
I stood near the chokecherry
for a time, waiting to see if another leaf or two might detach and flutter to
the ground.
The leaves all held in place.
At some point in the not-so-distant
future, the last chokecherry leaf will fall from the bush and skitter off to
become the landscape at large. Only then
will I watch for the lake to freeze.
—Mitchell Hegman
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