A large Pecan tree fell over in a wind storm and nearly crushed my rotting fence. Its trunk is on my neighbor's property and is therefore his problem. Some would act quickly to remove the hazard, the intrusion, the unsightliness. It leans and browns with decay dominating my view against the vertical living trees that surround it.
My wife and I go for walks together in the evenings. I remind Andi to slow down, that I would rather walk for leisure and not so much for power exercise. But I speed up. We pass a field that was once used by the old high school for football games. Brown weeds and grass with a rusty goalpost, the space is not quite a park as much as it is emptiness.
We scan the neighborhood as we walk. A house has been painted. A woman rakes leaves in a front yard where neither of us have ever seen any sign of life. Silhouettes of buzzards or hawks perch along bare pecan branches. We walk in the road because there are no sidewalks and keep an eye open for oncoming headlights.
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