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Mowing A summerlong ritual for my father. Half-dancing and half-rowing into a weedbank, he gripped the handles of the snath and swung, beginning high and back, and followed through, running the blade true to the ground and then up to winnow away the cut ends. Snakes and fieldmice and my mother's flowers got beheaded in his rage to mow, and pokewwes, briars around the pasture, were subdued to his measure. He even cut the shoulders of the public road, exposing beer cans and bags of trash, and once each season cleaned off the church yard and cemetery acre. mowing met his first requirements: solitude and no monetary gain. As he swung he must have seen the heads of neighbors, deacons, wife and son, topple, and hte stubble bleed, for their intrusion on his long reverie. That blade, a wide wing of metal, tempered in Czechoslovakia, soared around and back, making its deadly time regular as a pendulum, touching its flame with a hiss to the green stampede. But there was no end, except frost, to the siege of tender growth. Suddenly he'd stop and holding the scythe upright, take the stone from his hip pocket and whet the blade brilliant, spit on his hands and return to the lone war. I see him there now, wading in rampant vines, turning quick as a matador in overalls and wrecked hat, reaching back with his instrument to let the next wave of summer plunge past and wilt. |
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Honey Only calmness will reassure the bees to let you rob their hoard. Any sweat of fear provokes them. Approach with confidence, and from the side, not shading their entrance. And hush smoke gently from the spout of the pot of rags, for sparks will anger them. If you go near bees every day they will know you. and never jerk or turn so quick you excite them. If weeds are trimmed around the hive they have access and feel free. When they taste your smoke they fill themselves with honey and are laden and lazy as you lift the lid to let in daylight. No bee full of sweetness wants to sting. Resist greed. With the top off you touch the fat gold frames, each cell a hex perfect as a snowflake, a sealed relic of sun and time and roots of many acres fixed in crystal-tight arrays, in rows and lattices of sweeter latin from scattered prose of meadow, woods. |
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Wild Peavines I have never understood how the mountains when first seen by nunters and traders and settlers were covered with peavines. How could every cove and clearing, old field, every opening in teh woods and even understories of deep woods be laced with vines and blossoms in June? They say the flowers were so thick the fumes were smothering. They tell of shining fogs of bees above the srawling mess and every bush and sapling tangled with tender curls and tresses. I don't see how it was possible for wild peas to take the woods in shade and deep hollows and spread over cliffs in hanging gardens and choke out other flowers. It's hard to believe the creek banks and high ledges were that bright. But hardest of all is to see how such profusion, such overwhelming lushness and lavish could vanish, so completely disappear that you must look through several valleys to find a sprig or strand of wild peavine curling on a weedstalk like some word form a lost language once flourishing on every tongue. |
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