It rained every day for a week and then 
the temperature soared past the century mark 
and the corn was sweating and the soybeans 
were sweating and the air was thick with all
that outgassing and the greenery that passes for 
grass in my yard drank it in and grew and grew 

until it was past my ankles and rising in some 
patches nearly to my knees, thick and unruly, 
I had only a reel mower to get through it and 
beyond a certain height there is no getting through 
it there is only a flattening and a refusal, the reel 
mower being the mule of yard tools. 

I remember cutting grass with a pair of shears 
in my tiny suburban yard in Phoenix when there 
was no mower and anyway one should not grow 
a lawn in the desert, I remember swinging a sythe 
through an overgrown Indiana meadow, refusing 
to give in to the internal combustion noisemaker 

that had nothing to recommend it but speed; still, 
in the heat of late July with that mule of a mower 
no match for the wild green profusion of my yard 
I apologized to the gods of lush vegetation, made 
an offering on the altar of the hand tool ethos and
borrowed a gas-powered mower from a friend.

Grateful for the speed, I won’t deny it.