Oak leaves fall in spring

Oak leaves fall in spring, in the south. Our ground tattooed with mellow browns and gutters plugged with crisp. It is a double-edged drop, as I stop scraping and lean on the rake, remembering decades back, preparing for white and ashen in a colder location. Now, the release brings an abundant pale of new growth which, in a few days, will toughen and deepen its green. Heat and heavy air is soon to follow. But the smell of the different times and places is the same as gusts of breeze send leaves skittering across the sidewalk and down the street, to rest in front of other homes, where my thin curly gems become another man’s bane.