I have a scythe, a broken one. One of my projects this summer is to fix it and sharpen it and make the pasuture sing with the hiss of the cutting and the metal strop of stopping to sharpen. Is this too much to ask?  Inspired by Kevin’s gift, Marc Hamer’s A Life in Nature.

 

Crows & Dragonflies & Vultures

Mowing in the pastures:
Necessary, violent, sad.
Dragonflies are drawn up in patrol
by the vibration of the tractor.
Crows, too,
forever opportunists,
Peck away at hidden treasures
in the aftermath.
Vultures circling on thermals,
riding the smell of decay.
Never make an idyll
of life in the rural:
Mowing is feeding,
feeding time.
I would rather be in the place
where I scythe the grass
and all the creatures escape
and there is no food
for crow or vulture
or naught else