Contested

Male prowess takes many forms
and its sturdy competitive process
is a longitudinal study in the arcane
art of achievement superiority. From
the budding challenge of spitting
distance to the boastful arc of urine
eliciting wildly admiring cheers, to
the civil challenge of skipping stones
over water, sharp-shooting and lifting
weights, all contests that track the
male psyche from infant to manhood,
callow youth to the mature responsibility
of the family man; from the task-ridden
householder comes the plaint of
fall-fatigued nuisance, the ritual of
leaf-raking. From the ridiculous to the
sublime, but mostly absurd; overhead
the claim by one neighbour of bagging
nine for the detritus fallen from his
mature maple; the other, of two bags,
fully-packed, from his own old pine,
every time the winds blow dead needles
and all year around, mind you now.