The Mowers



The mowers are at work on the hillside,

cutting brush with string trimmers and chattering saws,

and a haze of dust rises up around

the crew as they labor, sun gleaming off

their protective visors and their white helmets.



There was too much, deadfalls and brittle

choke-weed, and the more it rained

the deeper the crowd of thistles grew.

This is dynamite for fire, the foothill

of wick-dry brambles, and all the long noon

the mowers sweat until the severed

chaff lies withered white,



the land losing its

vetch and wild peas along with the long-spent

lupine and the exhausted clover,

none of it life, now, none of it promise,

leaving the cropped-bare bedrock,

cutting the tangled multitude

to the air we breathe.

 



The Cricket



Outside beyond the porch rail

one cricket has begun,

on and then on, a shrilling that pure repetition,

pin-point sound by sound,

turns at last into a gritty,



dry music. And from this sing-song

the neighborhood rooflines and the alley down past

parked cars and the dumpsters take on

a three-dimensions night used to promise

but lost. Here, says the brittle,

invertebrate voice. Here.



And its smallness punctures the abyss

of the stairway down into the invisible lawn.

This voiceless speech

needles the windless dark

and the distance between this airless kitchen



and the city around is greater than before,

but profound and spacious,

altered by a tuneless call where

something wants to live.

Michael Cadnum has published nearly forty books. His new collection of poems, The Promised Rain, is in private circulation. He lives in Albany, California.

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Published in the September 12, 2014 issue: View Contents

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