Early this morning, I stepped outside my front door to get the newspaper lying at the foot of the drive. The air was cold, dry and still. No traffic. No walkers, with dogs or otherwise. My neighbors’ blinds were down, the windows of their cars covered in frost. I walked carefully down the driveway, remembering to bend my knees and keep my back straight as I bent to retrieve the paper. As I stood, turned and started back up the drive, I heard the smallest tap. Not sure what it was. Maybe a cat? Maybe a crow, like the one that had sideswiped me when I was out walking a few days ago. Out of the corner of my eye, I'd seen a fig leaf fall from my neighbor’s tree: the size of a salad plate, yellow with scalloped edges. I’d watched it land on the driveway. I smiled to think I’d heard a leaf fall – in real time, as they say nowadays. And then I heard other taps, one at a time, and noticed the red and gold leaves falling from my cherry and dogwood trees. One by one they settled with tiny taps on grass already covered with an autumn patchwork quilt. While I stood silent and alone in my front yard, I realized how many leaves had already fallen without my hearing their tap, tap, tap. And I think of myself as a good listener.
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