A carpet of gold and orange and red covers my yard and there are more leaves on the trees. They will come down as well and then I will have to stop imagining this Walt Disney magic of color on the ground and acknowledge that God’s leaves, like Disney’s celluloid will decay.

So, were I one of these young starlets you see on the tabloids at the check-out counter, I could probably con some rakish fellows to move them off the grass. However, I am not, and it will be just AmeliaJake and her rake out there.

I’m planning on making a bunch of small piles and then towing a tarp and collecting those piles and, finally, dumping them at the curb. It would be worth it if I could then set those leaves on fire, the way we used to do a long time ago, but, alas, times have changed.

I often told myself that these chores were character-building, a time for reflection and exercise. That understanding of the situation is becoming someone fuzzy to me this year. I need some poetic help: Like dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly.