As a boy I watched, bemused,
my father on his annual autumnal
sorties to the large expanse of lawn
separating our house from Anzac Highway,
rake in one hand, bags in the other,
wondering why on earth he bothered
to rake and bag the thick spread
of yellow, orange, red and russet leaves
that shifted and swirled like the lawn’s
plumage, that spoke lavishly of the season
and could, I thought, have remained
in place, when later, my mother
would note his pain, his lumbago,
a word I loved as much as zabaglione
and tartufo, only to find myself now,
older than he was then,
doing the same thing, and finding
comfort in it, ritual, repetition,
the satisfaction of imposing
transient order in one small,
contained area, while chaos runs rampant
across the wild tracts of my life.
David Adès is most recently the author of The Heart’s Lush Gardens. His next collection, A Blink of Time’s Eye, is forthcoming from Five Islands Press. He is the host of a monthly poetry podcast series, Poets’ Corner, which can be found on Youtube.