Raking

Anna Bell and Lane, eighty, make small leaf piles in the heat, each pile a great joint effort, like fifty years of marriage, sharing chores a rusty dance. In my own yard, the stacks are big as children, who scatter them, dodge and limbo the poke of my rake. We’re lucky, young and straight-boned. And I feel sorry for the couple, bent like parentheses around their brittle little lawn. I like feeling sorry for them, the tenderness of it, but only for a moment: John glides in like a paper airplane, takes the children for the weekend, and I remember, they’re the lucky ones— shriveled Anna Bell, loving her crooked Lane.