PAUL HOSTOVSKY's Unlikely Loves
Battling the Wind and Everything Else
My neighbor the one with the flagpole
and the flag, and the pickup truck
and the patriotic bumper sticker and the perfect
lawn, and the leaf-blower with the power pack—
never seems to see me when I wave to him.
In fact, I am trying to get his attention
right now, but his eyes are on the enemy,
the leaves. He is aiming the long barrel
of his leaf-blower at them, and blowing
them away. But the wind is counting its money
and throwing it away all over his lawn again.
He is Sisyphus pushing one red leaf or another
up the berm of a perfect lawn forever. And I feel
sorry for him, the way I might feel sorry for
a large carnivorous bird in a shrinking ecosystem
on the nature channel. I know when he looks at me
he sees a guy who is half-assedly, half-heartedly
raking the leaves around on his disgrace-of-a-lawn
the way a kid pushes the peas around on his dinner plate
with his fork, trying to make it look like there are fewer
peas than before, when really there are still the exact
same number of peas; and he sees the leaves messing up
his lawn as my leaves, because his leaves are all in order—
he sees to that. So the ones that are crossing the border
and have no right to be here and should just go back
to where they came from, must be mine. I see this all
written on his face as he grits his teeth and stares
the dancing leaves down, then blows them up
over the edge of his property. But they keep on
dancing back again because there's a party
going on here, and the wind is counting its money
and throwing it away. So I walk right up to him—
I get right in his face so he can't not see me,
and I wave hello. He disengages his leaf-blower,
after revving it a few times first at the intersection
of our meeting. And I say to him, "I've been trying
to get your attention." And he says, "You got it."
And I say, "How you doing?" And he says, "Battling
the wind and everything else." And I say, "I can see that."
And he says, "How you doing?" And I say, "Good. Good."
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