The perfect length of grass.
So the cut is straight, sharp
as if to mark
an unambiguous act
completed.
Mowing, as in mowing down.
A small patch of the world
I find unaccountably pleasing,
overlapping rows
manicured, even.
Like winter snow, with just enough wetness,
my shovel smoothly slices
geometric edges.
And so I tend
to my modest plot,
conferring order, or its illusion
in a relentlessly messy world.
Where nothing is sure,
no end, definite.
I breathe in
the mulchy scent
of wet hay, and chlorophyll;
summer
in a whiff.
And odourless snow
And odourless snow
in
drifts, and windrows.
Although wet wool
brings me back,
redolent as fresh cut grass.
Radiators
in an over-heated school,
steaming
with multi-coloured mitts.
Dull-eyed kids
redolent as fresh cut grass.
Radiators
in an over-heated school,
steaming
with multi-coloured mitts.
Dull-eyed kids
hoping for a white-out
blizzard;
snow days
giddy with broken rules.
I survey my work, take its measure
pleased with myself.
The freshly cut lawn,
suffused
with the soft green light of dusk.
And underneath
restless weeds
already pushing up.
The poem is supposed to evoke the tension between order and disorder; between the bourgeois ideal of the well-regulated life, and a kind of restless bohemian undercurrent. So there is the sense of smell, with its primitive emotional power ...the snow day, with its anarchic release ...and the weeds, relentlessly growing, unseen.
The illusion of order we get from these mundane tasks -- the even swathes of a well-cut lawn, the geometric precision of cleared snow -- is unaccountably pleasing! I think this is because most of what we do is ambiguous, equivocal: work is unquantifiable, with no sure endpoint, no sense of finality: shuffling papers …deals that go nowhere …meaningless busy-work, that does not last. So anything that offers a hard measurable outcome -- as you get when you stand back, hands on hips, and survey a well-cut lawn -- is an uncommonly satisfying. And actually getting something done through hard physical work is one of the simple pleasures of life.
snow days
giddy with broken rules.
I survey my work, take its measure
pleased with myself.
The freshly cut lawn,
suffused
with the soft green light of dusk.
And underneath
restless weeds
already pushing up.
The poem is supposed to evoke the tension between order and disorder; between the bourgeois ideal of the well-regulated life, and a kind of restless bohemian undercurrent. So there is the sense of smell, with its primitive emotional power ...the snow day, with its anarchic release ...and the weeds, relentlessly growing, unseen.
The illusion of order we get from these mundane tasks -- the even swathes of a well-cut lawn, the geometric precision of cleared snow -- is unaccountably pleasing! I think this is because most of what we do is ambiguous, equivocal: work is unquantifiable, with no sure endpoint, no sense of finality: shuffling papers …deals that go nowhere …meaningless busy-work, that does not last. So anything that offers a hard measurable outcome -- as you get when you stand back, hands on hips, and survey a well-cut lawn -- is an uncommonly satisfying. And actually getting something done through hard physical work is one of the simple pleasures of life.
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