Leaf Bags

What did I say about the leaves on my street tree?


By mid-afternoon all of the leaves on my street tree had fallen. This left a thick carpet of leaves into the street, so I decided to rake them up before it rained again. Kurt came out and made fun of my hand rake and let me borrow his real rake. One problem with 3 foot tall leaf bags, when you are only 5 foot 2 inches, is that they are impossible to get open all the way to the bottom. I had to put the bag over my head and get inside to my waist to reach the square bottom and open the bag all the way. I'm sure if Kurt was watching he thought that was pretty funny, too. Kurt had already raked the leaves on his side into a pile, but my side filled 4 leaf bags,


Trash day is not until Monday, so I can fill the tops of the bags with the leftover leaves between now and then. It was supposed to rain and then snow last night, so I put the bags on the covered porch. It did rain all night, but no snow at my house.

The next enlightenment topic is Regrets, with a section of poem "Maud Muller" by John Greenleaf Whittier,

Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!

God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;

And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!

The whole poem is worth reading, so you can get the whole story, and you can find it here, http://www.poetry-archive.com/w/maud_muller.html. The maiden and the judge meet, like each other but don't say anything, the judge rides away, they both marry someone else, marry badly, and regret what could have been with each other. Regret is destructive to enlightenment and right up there with Resentment. If you feel something in your heart and do not act on it out of fear, the result is regret. I have to wonder if the bad marriages of the maiden and the judge may have been caused by them yearning over a fantasy, so regret keeps you from living in the present and its destructiveness gets spread around to others in your life. Or maybe these are two fearful people who never say what they want and use regret to avoid any kind of relationship. It is easier to do your best and then fail or endure pain, because then you live without regret and in the present. I like to ask myself, what would I do if I was not afraid? I suppose I should rephrase that into a positive, what would I do if I was fearless?