Mowing Lessons
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The Poem
Mowing Lessons
This is what I know about Tuesday:it arrives whether or not the sky is doing that.
He is mowing the lawn.The cloud behind him is the specific orangeof something that has already happenedand cannot be un-happened —and he is mowing the lawn in his swim trunkswith the focused expression of a manwho made a commitment to this lawnbefore any of this startedand intends to honor it.I have enormous respect for this.
The woman in the polka dots is watching himthe way you watch someone you have watched for thirty years —with the complete attention of a personwho has run out of things to say about his decisionsand has arrived at something on the other side of argument,which is not acceptance exactly,more like the specific exhaustionof being right for so longthat being right no longer feels like anything.She is barefoot.She came outside without her shoes.This tells you everythingabout how quickly this particular Tuesday arrived.
The woman with the sword is standing in the middle of the yard.Not at the edge.Not at someone else’s border.In the center.Of this yard.Of this Tuesday.Of the specific space between the man and the cloudand the boy and the drone and the polka dotsand everything that is happening all at once —she is standing in the middle of itwith the sword and the stillness of someonewho arrived here with a purposeand is waiting for the momentwhen the purpose becomes clear to everyone else —which may be before the cloud resolves,or after,or she has decided that the cloud is not her concernand the sword is for something entirely differentthat none of the rest of us have noticed yet.
The woman with the sword
The drone noticed.The drone notices everything.The drone is keeping it to itself.
The boy has his back to me.He is watching the man mow the lawn in front of the cloudthe way children watch the adults in their lives —with the complete bewildered attention of someonetrying to learn what the rules areby watching how the rules are broken.He will spend years processing this Tuesday.This is fine.Some Tuesdays take years.
Above the house the drone watches everythingwith its one yellow eye —the mowing, the cloud, the sword,the polka dots, the boy,the ordinary extraordinary fact of this yardon this morningin this particular America —recording it all for someonewho will review the footage laterand make a determination about what was happening here.Good luck to them.
Its one yellow eye
The grasshopper, if she were here,would cross the yard without comment.She is not here.Even the grasshopper had somewhere else to be today.Tell me — what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?
He is mowing the lawn.The cloud is behind him.The lawn needed mowing.These are the facts.These have always been the facts.The facts do not require the sky’s permission to be facts —and the lawn does not care about the cloud,and the man does not care about the drone,and the drone sees everything and understands none of it,and the boy is watching and learningand will carry this Tuesday in his bodyfor the rest of his lifewithout ever finding the right words for it —which is also what America is,which is also what Tuesday is,which is also, it turns out, what a lawn is —something you tend regardless,something you push through in your swim trunkswith your jaw set and your hands on the mowerwhile the sky does whatever the sky is going to do.
The lawn will need mowing again next week.
He will be here.
The cloud is less certain.