Shoveling Out
Dust haloed, scratcheyed,
kneedeep in grain, we shovel toward
the buried shriek of the auger.
Our masks press sharply into our
tear ducts as we slowly heave forward,
exposing the rough concrete you
laid the summer that boy
beat up your brother and you
got suspended for threatening him
on his home answering machine.
You spent June helping Grandma
fix fence, haul hay, dig, mow, and sweep,
walking the pasture out back,
becoming patience in the empty,
finding a milkweed there, bursting
loose, unable to contain its own
entropy, and knowing the warning
of that. When we slow up,
exposing the drill, the grain bin
rings with mechanical crows,
and, as we snort, scratch, and tumble
out, wheat pours from our shoes
like old blessings.
Cemetery Mower
after Ted Kooser
The sun rose up at 6:15 today. I’d already primed the mower by then, drank half my coffee, the painted glaze chipped into my mouth as I rolled out of my truck. I spit & cough the night’s bad humors away. The clients don’t seem to mind. They don’t pay me to pull away the bindweed from iron crosses, to wipe bird scat from the gazebo railing. Nope, just to mow, shearing the grass with the loud metal teeth, the petroleum breath and oil sweat rising acrid above the many dead and the one living. Wind sprays the coarse irritant grass on my legs and I hesitate to pinch a dusty snot bubble out from under my nose, afraid I’ll only make my upper lip dirtier. No one is here to judge me, and I try to do the same, but when a stone catches my eye and I notice how small the years are between dates, I wonder why. I always wonder, when the granite reads “Our Angel” or the ceramic photo looks too damn young. A boy’s Senior photo catches me cold and I nearly crash into his grandmother, the mower’s deck grazing her stone like an eager calf nicking fingers held through a fence. This is the only red prairie grass I cut, all of it too close to the names. I course correct and return to my duty, the only one here who can’t yet escape their shame.
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