Raking Leaves

The tines of the rake comb through a dispersing tumble. Ocher clumps form random hillocks, most slip through the iron teeth dancing drunkenly away. I was called into the rushing air. Physical work with the dead and dying is a ‘calling’ isn’t it? The newly deceased keep falling. Maple leaf bones crackle underfoot. I scoop their remains, brush an autumnal cerecloth, shake the dead into swirls of afterlife.