Suburban Man

July 21 2020

The machine doesn't cut, trim, clip

slash, hack, cleave,

or even clear.

It mows

down, through, over.

An exercise of force

that subdues the lawn

and renders it compliant.

Ruler straight lines.

A dead even height.

The contrasting greens

between overgrown

and perfectly ordered.

Even the potent sound

that obliterates all else

has a comforting consistency

   . . . the hell with the neighbours.

And the smell of exhaust

mixed with fresh cut grass

has a pleasurable whiff of nostalgia.

How sweet

to see the dandelions fall,

cut down

in yellow sun-kissed splendor,

before they soon transform

into leggy stems

with ghostly halos
of malignant seed. 

How even a powerless man

at the end of a futile week

of pushing paper and taking orders

is able to exert control,

mowing even swathes

of manicured lawn

in a precise pattern

up-and-down the yard.

Suburban man,

in button-down shirt

and matching pleated khakis.

Breaking the Sunday morning calm

in a symbolic act

of passive defiance.

As for me, I'm most likely dressed in old shorts and a torn T-shirt. I'm never up so early (definitely not a morning person!), was never a mindless office drone, and am retired, so no one orders me around. And my machine is electric and I'm far out in the country, where no one else can hear. So mowing the lawn is not at all a passive-aggressive act born of frustration.

Still, I have to admit to enjoying those even rows and a bourgeois sense of accomplishment. Not to mention the sober understanding that I have, at least temporarily, civilized nature on my appointed plot of land. Which, if left on its own, would quickly overgrow, and eventually evict us.

This is the note that accompanied this poem when it was initially sent to my first readers:

Something new. Once again, first draft. This one came so easily (pretty much flowed out of the pen, as you see it here) I have to wonder where it came from. Apparently, some deep unplumbed well of frustration! 

I do know that I've been procrastinating on my lawn cutting  (or at least the weed bed I call a lawn), so this is likely part of where it came from. 

And there is, admittedly, the fact that cutting the grass can be very satisfying:  a simple contained task with a hard, measurable, and very apparent outcome.