Hand-Push Mower
Sept 19 2009

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” (attributed to Gustave Flaubert)


The hand-push mower
whirrs through the grass,
carving green manicured strips
clipped as close as boot camp.
The scent is succulent, sweet —
fresh-cut hay, mixed with summer day.
Sunday morning
when the dew has barely lifted.

It’s a heavy machine;
built before obsolescence,
cheap tinny knock-offs
with high-gloss paint.
The blades are elegantly curved
disappearing in an egg-beater blur
the moment it's set in motion.
The wheels are big, black, permanent,
the grips, contoured to fit my hand
smoothly,
hot, in thick leather gloves
stiff and stained with grass;
but inside, soft as a chamois.

I walk along, behind it
my pace steady, measured,
concentrating on long thin rectangles
ruler-straight edges
the margins of beds.
And the base of the chain-link fence,
where mutant weeds
send up grotesque stems
their curdled leaves.

Every two weeks, all summer
I perform this chore;
intoxicated by smell,
reassured by the well-oiled whir,
unaccountably pleased
by the even surface.

The unexpected pleasures
of the bourgeoisie.



I remembered the opening quote as “Live your life as a bourgeois, so you may seek passion and risk in your art.” Which I think may be better, even if he did say it first! Anyway, they both fit the poem. And I think it would be terribly disrespectful not to have stuck to the original.