I still like rounding up fallen leaves the old-fashioned way, with a rake, mostly because it’s a soft and hushing kind of activity, much like writing sometimes is for me – as I hope it sometimes was for my students. In forthcoming days, I’m sure I will enjoy the silence of the yard as I sweep the rake back and forth, finding a strange kind of serenity with the easy strokes. As the leaves let themselves be brought together in piles, so will my feelings seem to fall into their proper and peaceful places inside me. The noise of stressful thoughts will subside into softness very much like the sounds made by my moving rake. I try to write a paragraph each day, and I often find a similar smoothness in the process of setting words and sentences down in a disciplined fashion. There’s sometimes a sense of almost flawless synchronization in the writing, as if the words can do nothing else but be just where they are on the page. For me, a dismal day can become as soft as piles of leaves once a paragraph’s words are put down. Was it ever the same with my students? Perhaps not often, but I do hope they occasionally felt the fullness of peace that placing words carefully together can bring. Perhaps, in the privacy of their rooms at home, they sometimes saw their words meet together on the computer screen as easily and softly as leaves will be assembling on lawns in the coming weeks.
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