The Racket at 7:00 o'clock Saturday Morning

I am roused by a drone,
if this alarm had a name,
it would be shatter,
I am roused and kept awake
by a pulsing, uneven drone.
 
And I ask,
 
'why do we cut grass, why do we lop the tops
of millions of the perfectly evolved?
Each spear slopes in a sensual bend to the sky,
each a pair, respecting God’s scoring in a middle.
 
I am roused by blade abrupting blades,
While I hear but one side of a conversation,
the side of the mower, I suspect the other  
-- the side of the leaves -- far noisier.
 
I gather myself and stumble out the room,
steady myself against the window
to the park to watch this man,
I become rapt in his performance:
there is no lackadaisical bone in this hireling,
I see a face under the spell of the task  
of making a spot on the ground bald.
 
Maybe he is in the province right now,
lying on cool bamboo slats,
with his boy between him and his wife,
as I stare at him staring at his whirring scythe,
 
or perhaps he intends to make a tonsure for the park.
 
I have seen the proficient shift machine
from one hand to another,
but our lad grips it with both, easy rider-style,
with a hint of a smile and committed brow,
 
he will change the color of the park beside me.
 
I do not expect him to question
 how a cut blade of grass is better,
why the ground should not cushion boys
lying  on their backs while
they read shapes in the clouds,
and why a park should not be greener,
why he should not leave the leaves unsavaged.
 
Oh, dear, he has gone bananas over a spot!
I can smell the ghosts of leaves rising.
 
He has stopped, or he is having coffee
with three spoonfuls of sugar somewhere,  
I just realized that I have been coughing.
I suspect my lungs are reacting
to the invisible outrage on the ground.
 
I look out my window and what was green is now brown,
and while the world may prefer it bald and brown,
I wonder: how many of my neighbors are wondering
why they are coughing right now.
 
The leaves of the trees above the brown field
were frozen as if the scene posed
for the photograph I was taking.
The sky is greyer than blue or white.  
The hireling is gone; it is quiet, the weekend has arrived.
 
I should be glad leaves scream silently.
.