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Remembrance Day
by
Greg Bauder
Years ago, I watched idly
As my father, his face glaring, a rocket
Man in the sunlight, and hairy,
Gave our lawn a buzz cut
His mower, raucous as a helicopter, advanced
Over path lines of falling grass blades
He stopped occasionally to toss a rock like a grenade
Over the fence into the Gallipoli ditch
In front of our yard
The constant roar frightened me a little
A child who was wary of rocks
Being shot like bullets from the lawnmower--
Howitzer
(I
remember my father's boot marks on each row,
Their mud, a grim reminder of Dunkirk,
Robert Ross, Oliver Stone.)
I
admired his patience as the rank grass
Fell before him
Then he began to thin the hedge's big bans
Weed-eater loud, I imagined, like a Tiger tank
With a whipping tail in its turret
When he stopped cutting, our lawn
Was as neat as a cemetery's
But he was green with envy, my mother said
Over our neighbor's grass.
Greg Bauder
has a BA in English Literature from the University of
British Columbia and he
has been published in many North American magazines. He has two novels
forthcoming from Publish America in 2004: The Temptress Ariel
and Selene’s Guiding Light.
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