Self-Portrait as Yard Boy

What I learned of loneliness I learned mostly

mowing the lawn. August; Texas dusk; finally

not too hot to push a rotting motor through

Otherwise, there I was alone knowing my dad

wanted the grass an inch shorter but the clouds,

at least, were heavenly, heaven-sent—they filled, I mean, the bland

oppressive sky with pink, like cotton candy

at a funeral. And why did I feel guilty then

as I do now watching the season

start saying again spring with specks of wildflowers—

plains paintbrush, Blackfoot daisy. It should be as easy:

grown, the mind tilled of its infertile habits.

The wish to go, for example, to my Father and confess

I only wanted to hear well done

my good and faithful servant or at least my name

called as a dog’s would have been

if we owned one. Well, there was for a moment Buddy,

Collie the color of a cow, rioting like mad

in our too close yard. And maybe they weren’t lying,

maybe they took him out to the farm: generic, boundless,

as true as a math equation. Maybe they’d only left out

I’d thought would scatter like clippings

from an unfinished childhood have rooted

and bloomed: Buddy: rowdy-in-the-tall-grass;

Moses, goofy-eyed and shy, juking in the volleyball sand;

and Goldie, here, in the pollinated afternoon air,

shaggy-haired-terrier rolling her barrel body

in the lawn—let this be one

of the many of her memories that seed

in my synapses. Only the necessary

remains. I, for example, still must say I,

though I’m not that boy anymore

and now suspect I never was.