Leaf Blowers
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
The Leaf Blowers
Imagine autumn. There is an exciting crispness in the air and the wind begins to busy itself and stretch it's airy limbs in anticipation of the coming winter. The trees have sensed the lowering daily angle of the sun and decided it's time to give up their leaves, first turning them brown, red and gold. Walking to the bus, car, or mailbox becomes an adventure, a spirited, poetic awakening as nature messes up your hair, and everything else around you.
Then come the blowers. They start a 9:00am every morning. Roaring, whining, mechanical demons that belch engine exhaust which is not subject to emmissions testing. They swarm over the ocean of blacktop, blowing the leaves past the concrete shores, and onto the grassy islands where they are deemed "tidy." They blow across my threshold and under my door where the grime of civilization combines with the soil and leaf dust of nature in my fresh and recently cleaned entrance way. The wind may blow in a leaf from time to time, but to get the grime, you need the blowers.
I yell, but I am screaming into a black hole, because the machine is much louder than any voice could ever be. The fear of letting my soul be sucked into oblivion causes me to thrash and wave my arms, 'til at last they stop.
"Why can't you use a broom?" I ask in desperation.
"Because we've got to get these leaves up and it would never get done," says the man who tends the demon.
"Who is the genius that decided the leaves need to be gotten up anyway?" I call into the black hole.
After the demons are banished for the day, the wind blows the leaves back onto the pavement.
~Lute
Imagine autumn. There is an exciting crispness in the air and the wind begins to busy itself and stretch it's airy limbs in anticipation of the coming winter. The trees have sensed the lowering daily angle of the sun and decided it's time to give up their leaves, first turning them brown, red and gold. Walking to the bus, car, or mailbox becomes an adventure, a spirited, poetic awakening as nature messes up your hair, and everything else around you.
Then come the blowers. They start a 9:00am every morning. Roaring, whining, mechanical demons that belch engine exhaust which is not subject to emmissions testing. They swarm over the ocean of blacktop, blowing the leaves past the concrete shores, and onto the grassy islands where they are deemed "tidy." They blow across my threshold and under my door where the grime of civilization combines with the soil and leaf dust of nature in my fresh and recently cleaned entrance way. The wind may blow in a leaf from time to time, but to get the grime, you need the blowers.
I yell, but I am screaming into a black hole, because the machine is much louder than any voice could ever be. The fear of letting my soul be sucked into oblivion causes me to thrash and wave my arms, 'til at last they stop.
"Why can't you use a broom?" I ask in desperation.
"Because we've got to get these leaves up and it would never get done," says the man who tends the demon.
"Who is the genius that decided the leaves need to be gotten up anyway?" I call into the black hole.
After the demons are banished for the day, the wind blows the leaves back onto the pavement.
~Lute
