Kindness is a Rake

Even under a merry morning sky
Her mind drags its shirt tails through gray slurry.
Best medicine - work, she thinks and
The yard offers her a blanket of leaves.
Rake in hand, she starts at the sidewalk.
It's a slow transfer, this brittle, brown tide
crawling toward the street, still
Worry chafes her shoulders.

He just shows up,
Blind to the melancholy under her rake.
He fixes instead on his favorite fall ritual -
Can I help? with kind chatter, contagious.
Now the sycamore and maple surge swells
With ample energy to waylay her troubles.
Gloom tumbles with every tarp load to the front ditch.
Soon two rakes return to the shed, and

Thank you - her prayer to him.

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What the Muses Leave Behind

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