from: Roots and Paths
Roots and Paths
Jonquils bloom in my manicured,
mulched yard. Nearby, the woods
still exhale winter,
bare and brown in the morning sun,
nothing green but moss,
leftover sprigs of grass,
the living and the dead
still one.
Leafless vines
surround us. Some hold
half-fallen trees in a tangled
aerial embrace,
others wait like snares
overhead.
Everywhere,
scattered,
splattered,
peeled,
broken
trees cause us to veer
from the familiar track.
An upturned trunk’s
vestigial roots spread
like a large pelvic bone.
Another’s are hind feet
ready to spring toward us.
A chain-sawed
hollow log is a cannon’s
bore aimed our way.
When I look down the hill, I see
the path where I will be,
heading in the opposite
direction,
on a different plane.
I look up,
see a hint of where I have been.
Both are familiar and foreign.
A fallen tree, caught
in the fork of another,
becomes my rudder.
Missouri Mowing
I wait to find two days in June
when the pasture grass is
ready to be cut
and the Missouri weather will not
poach me.
With the fescue in the fields
more than thigh
high, I wrestle
the Bush Hog onto the tractor’s
power take-off to begin six hours of mowing,
shaving everything in my path.
Donning my baseball cap du jour
and sound-deadening earmuffs, I drive
along the fence line of the first field,
cutting,
circling to the right.
Three-foot swaths
mark my progress,
time moves as slowly
as my orange machine fighting
thick prairie.
Clockwise around the irregular edge,
the blade
spins in a counter direction.
Cutting from the outside in,
I travel an ever-changing
pattern, move from
boredom to
sensory overload.
From the house, the field
seems a block of green,
but hands on the wheel, eyes
opened, I see
vines
intertwined
with ripened seed heads of grass,
bright pink thistle flowers
risen in defiance,
Queen Anne’s lace and clover
in gentle bloom.
Rabbits race from the uncut center
in wild
zigzag
panic.
Bright blue-feathered swallows follow,
crisscross within my reach, gather
insects stirred
into the air by my mowing.
Dozens whirl and circle,
fill their bills,
disappear to their nests and young,
return
for more split-tailed dances.
A faded blue
pickup
leaves
the subdivision across the road,
hand mower in its bed. |