From Marvell
1
With love of Juliana stung.
There was an influx of bees that year
so it wasn’t initially clear
that it was only her.
Though what they did was slight
when weighed against.
Now it seems all
the bees are dying.
Empty hives.
Guess it’s not just the bees
that go missing.
Something
that can’t be named takes
everything away.
2
There were so many mowers to choose from.
A Lawnboy didn’t seem like the right one. After all,
Damon had already been done in and made to feel small.
Juliana had done that. Why not something with more weight.
Toro. At least the name intimates
a battle before the inevitable
running
through.
3
Damon wonders about
the glowworms and where they might be.
Did they die off. Perhaps they never lived
here. There are fireflies
that last for awhile. Which is breathing, a moment
in time.
Damon needed someone to talk to,
even if they couldn’t respond to that kind of wound. It was said their light
lasted long enough for him to finish the grounds.
But that was so long ago
diminished.
4
Damon was upset to read
a poem where Larkin ran over the
hedgehog with his mower. All of it jammed
against the blades. Might
not have been looking where he
was headed. Stalled twice. Lost in thought, perhaps—
an old lover who had come back in that instant. The one
with glasses and the ten-guinea ring that he could never love.
For Damon
that would seem a stroke of luck.
5
Damon himself wanders off,
loses track. Clipped the heads
off the daffodils in
their flower beds.
Mrs. ___ will
have a fit when she sees
the damage. He’ll have
to create some kind of story.
It hurts to look more then you
might imagine. That beheading.
More dread to manage.
6
There were spiders—the brown recluse—
hidden in the grass. He wondered how many
he mowed under with each pass. Damon
knew, after all, there was no hiding—even the snake
inside his second skin would someday
have to show that glitter
kept within.
7
Damon had heard some time ago
they used a scythe
to cut the grass. He had seen one in a thrift store.
How hard that must have
been to work with on any heated day. Which
was all there seemed to be,
these extremes. The temperature
creeping higher.
No water to ease, nowhere to pass the daily fires.
Scorched the earth and mower both.
8
Damon knew the world was no mirror.
Though every scene did fit
for his complaint. The door come unhinged
on the tool shed. Patches of washed-out
grass. Cement in the driveway
risen up and cracked. And of course one long
day when he was nearly done.
The engine coughed. Ran out of gas.
9
Damon hears Train in Vain
inside his head as he
rides across the grass.
He greased the chain
that morning so something
would go smoothly.
After months of this
he knows how ineffective
whatever he does is. The grass
grows back. Weeds, desires,
crop up, refuse to be cut. Merely bend
in the wind.
Tears are no remedy.
Fall to be distilled again.
10
She didn’t stand by me,
he sings. No not at all. Out in the grass
with the engine on there was
no one to hear. Even his
own voice above the din.
The lot rang in his ears.
Hark the words were his
how Damon sung
with love of Juliana stung.
11
What can be kept.
The smell of cut grass once
filled him. Now it
was something
he recalled. Of course
the scent was there.
But blunted. Before, the leaves fell
from the trees with otherworldly elegance.
Now hamstringed, Damon
sees everything askew.
The romance bleached out.
12
One morning under
cloud cover Damon
had a thought. If only
what he mowed
was grief. He felt the
blades beneath
go dull. The grass
behind uncut. He’d have
to take the mower in.
Sharpen his woe.
13
Passing a picture
window Damon saw
himself go by.
He turned
around and made another
pass. It threw back
a deformed sight.
It got at something.
not unlike the fun house
glass, even though you laughed.
Seen turned
inside out.
14
The season shifted
into cold. The grass
slowed down.
There wasn’t much
time left for mowing.
He’d have to put
the mower in the shed.
Then what.
At least that insistent gnawing
sometimes stilled when
he kept moving.
15
This time last year
he and Juliana
made it through
the winter warmly.
Now what.
The blood staunched;
the wound sealed.
Yet still it stays profound.
You see, death takes the grass
but allows it to come
back. Damon
feels no chance of such
rebirth from underground.
Perhaps death alone will have to do:
For Damon knows that Death
thou art a Mower too.
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