Because the acres were not smoothed with topsoil, she
wrenches
the hand mower into places the rider won't reach. Afraid of
snakes. Hating the thistle.
A keening from blade hitting rock goes into her ear like
an insistent beak in alder,
and she stops, repulls the starter, and leans in hard again
to move the engine
through the undergrowth. Her tall boys, men really, and
their father have long since
ceased wanting to know why, sweating, thorn-tattooed,
she pushes the doubtful edges
of the yard back, cutting paths through a dead
predecessor's orchard:
not to name wildflowers or to watch the delicate
metamorphoses unfold and unfold
in green billowed darkness; not to smell mint. How to
describe the beauties of this
violence and this fatigue, even to herself? Isn't there a
human stillness in shapes labored
over, and comfort to be taken from feeling nature's
refusal to be much moved?
Carol Frost,
Pure