07 October 2002 - 10:49 a.m. The grass in the back yard was still green when I raked all the leaves into a pile--the handle of the bamboo tool reaching above my eleven-year-old shoulder. The cuff of my left pant-leg was ground thin by my heel with threads reaching out like my roots. I collected the masses of reds and browns--the burnt pages of summer--and created a mighty hill! This was the single, greatest thing ever accomplished--every volley of a spiteful nature controlled and tidied by eighty pounds of me. What the trees could not hold on to, I had organized with only a pair of gloves and a bamboo rake with just about half of its teeth missing. There was nothing I could not do. Invisible smoke from a fireplace somewhere spun itself around me and the shivering trees as I finessed the edges of the mound. The rustling wind picked out smaller leaves and liberated them to the neighbors' yards. When the mulchy mountain was a perfect blunt cone, I backed away like a bull readying itself to charge, up the slope of the yard. I took distended backward steps and covered myself in the most serious expression I could conjure. I launched toward the pile leaving smoke and dust behind my like a rocket-car, my feet barely reaching the ground before the next great burst of speed. I bounded like a horse tearing chunks of sod from the lawn. My body became a new force of nature and I leapt. The world fell away. The tiny features of the globe reduced to topographical details, and just before the leaves exploded under the force of my re-entry I brushed my hand across the surface of the daylight moon. How tiny and quiet the earth is. (0) Comments?