Who Cuts the Grass in the Woods

[rowens]

                        Who Cuts the Grass in the Woods


I wanted these old bottles 
turned with their barcodes where I couldn't see them,
but whichever way I turned them
I could see one from another part of the room.
People told me the only thing was to throw them away.

So I went in the woods with a bucket
and a stick,
knocking spiderwebs from between the trees.
Trails had grown over since I was young.
Those things that float
     and look like pieces of fuzz
swarmed inanimately 
 but for their drifting
and caused no harm. 

My stick was shaped like a sickle
for it had been broken that way,
and as I waded through my many
     neighbors' garbage
brushing web debris off my arms,
avoiding snakes and the threat
of people's voices,
 the woods were like a stranger's house
 where once you were greeted
by something other. 

I dug and mislaid dirt,
like Yahweh with his clay figures,
and I didn't bring my bottles.
Found a downed tree
and pulled some dirt from under it.

I took trips back and forth
 out of the woods,
taking nothing and leaving nothing noticeable
behind. Though
once nearly (crushing I thought) stepping 
  on a mushroom that turned out to be a rubberball.

Returning to my plastic bucket
beside the tree and
filling it up with almost more than I could
     carry,
walking back, a snagging treelimb nearly 
ripped out one of my eyes.

Dirt stayed clear on my hand
 when I wiped my brow and squinched,
plucking a pumpkin seed shaped spider 
 off my collar.
Wondering, childishly, once again
(like I used to where the ducks go 
    from the little ponds by the road
in the winter),
who cuts the grass in the woods:
But recall,
praising lapses in memory,
 I figured a while ago

that winter makes its own
beginnings with muddy fingers.
And besides it being summer,
take for granted
that there has been some rain lately.