The Poet at Sixteen

for Larry Levis

1.
I didnt always mow straight lines.
Gawky, on a golf course grounds crew
with too much Gatsby, opening and closing
the choke to start the mower on cold May mornings
before the sun, before my friends had finished drinking
from the night before, with only swallows for company,
a mug of muddy Folgers. Those mornings the greens
were never consistently striped, one pass wide, the other
narrow, squiggled by caffeine. My mind
elsewhere, rolled in a joint burning too quickly,
lost among Christine Tracys hair.
Sunrises so disdained;
a nine p.m. bedtime before dark;
a five a.m. diesel exhaust alarm.
2.
Summers passed as dreams.
Her brunette hair, cut, shuttled to college,
high school ending in burned papers,
and the mowers hum moving along motionless,
consistent, like years. Cigarettes smoked, quit,
and smoked again; friends disappearing
like grass clippings, week after week. Always
the wandering mind lost
in the thrum of the spinning blades.
Smell of two-stroke my chosen cologne, visions
of you and me pulling on Muscatel comparing
Xando Rodriguez and Johnny Dominguez. It all passes

swiftly, a swallows twitter in the engine drone,

unheard, only seen, dipping its wings in dewy grass,
crystals I captured, beside other early risers,
who care enough to see each day begin.

Contemplating A Parliament of Owls

at The Bridges Golf Club
From the high branches, tiny deliberations hurtle
At me: tufts of fur and cracked bone. Its as if they say
Hmmmwhat do we have here
and then me, sun-bleached
umber jacket zipped to the neck, exhaling, steam
and exhaust, into their 4 a.m. elm.
Even when the wind is dead
The nights leaves will rustle.
The attack would be swift, Id never know
How many left their roosts, full bellied,
Barreling downward on dark silent wings,
talons tearing hands and shoulder and scalp.
Their ominous hoots abandoned. Clacks of silence in crystalline consensus: it must
go
the noise, and the starving light it must go
Although the morning mow is never interrupted
My head swivels with each pass of the elm,
even as the owls fast away the light,
Comatose and deaf
To the tractor din that traces the alternating lines in the lawns,
Bends the grass into its stiffed starched uniform.
And part of me wishes they knew their power,
summoned Athena from the dews gleam
To strike a spear through my heart,
added me to their skeletal offerings,
Watched my blood disintegrate into green.
But there are no deciding verdicts in a world
Where the grass keeps growing
No matter how often its dismembered. Only debates
Deciding which way to cut this week. Perhaps,
the owls know this, and sleep
The days away, keep soft wing over their eyes,
Having nightmares of umber jackets, grating engines,
a thundering intruder
They thought about driving out,
but decided instead to dream and wait
For the nights sanctuary.