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Suffocating Lawns of Skylark
—After D. H. Lawrence’s “The Mystic Blue”
In its waking, fresh daylight wanders
as morning settles on the railed lawns
that reveal the empty toil. Alone,
our damp surgery of lawnmowers
ensure our ignorance while we trim
away time to a row’s end.
We’ve set up
this ruse to keep us masked, to hide the cuts
emptiness brings, where endless whims
stage our survival and sharpen
crumpled distances. Our blood disappears.
We have cut and aligned repetition
in these mechanical rows—are deadened
by the fatigue of senses, the grid here
a false infinity we have fashioned.
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About the Author: Michael Catherwood’s latest book is Projector from Stephen F. Austin Press. Recent poems have appeared in The Common, I-70 Review, Pennsylvania English, and Common Ground Review. He’s the former editor at The Backwater Press and Associate Editor at Plainsongs since 1995. He’s a cancer survivor and lives with his wife Cindy in Omaha.
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Image Credit: John Vachon “Resident of Greendale, Wisconsin, mowing lawn” (1939) Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 