Mowing the lawn

Long ago I helped my godfather to
mow the lawn.
We pushed the machine across an amiable
surface.
We sweated together in Swiss sunlight and
I can't remember if we spoke
but my body remembers
everything.

Up, turn, around, and the pattern of everything
falls into place.
When places, dreams and returning things
cut across your temporary grass,
what is that jet tearing across the sky?
What is that scream that grass
closes as it
grows?

My godfather knew something
I still want to find in his kindness of'
pushing that lawn-mower and me.

After we had sweated in Swiss sunlight,
beside the slope down to the cellar I
remember well,
what a complex darkness of rooms
that was!
He cut bread, poured a cold drink,
and sliced onions, because the work was done and
we could eat for morning's work. 

Something tells me I must get up early
in the mornings of now because
grass is growing,
growing fast.

Not really for myself, anymore,
but for my children, and their children, too.
It's not so much about cutting it back,
but about a tidiness I'd prefer.
I don't mind sweating in Swiss sunlight when you know that
grass and onions and bread add up
to something simple and good.

If I had a lawn to mow in Africa,
where drought is normal,
and grass isn't
and onion is your staple diet, perhaps,
and not a treat with your godfather,
the steps taken over that land needing
something called love
are mine.
I am looking back to all my days,
and claiming them without
distinction of where the sun was
when I was there.