A Story about Mowing

I was mowing the grass and a neighbor came up to me with his dog. We've met once before. He gave me a tip about the mulch I was putting down. 

This time he asked how I was doing, and I said okay. 

He mentioned Roanoke and started telling me about how it was when he lived there, his ex-wife, the 5 cats he had in the house, what their names were, how he got divorced and moved to Danville, lived single for years and then remarried, liked Roanoke but didn't much care for Danville. I listened and nodded. He didn't seem to want a lot of feedback, so I just listened. Nice guy, a polite dog. 

But the dog finally started leaning on his leash, and the fellow and the dog moved on. We never exchanged names, maybe next time.

And on the Seventh Day God Didn't Mow

Sunday morning.

The rain falls and falls.

My lawn calls to me. A green siren. Mow me! Mow me!


I try to ignore it. The crazy grass, the clover. The tufts of weeds I can't identify.

What did the great gray poet Walt Whitman say about Leaves of Grass?

"Pretty to look at -- long as you don't have to mow!"

I mean who invented mowing? I can't remember Noah talking about it, and Moses definitely never wrote a commandment regarding mowing.

And Shakespeare -- a guy who thought and wrote about everything -- never said a thing about mowing. He never wrote: "Oh that this too too thick grass would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew--or that the Everlasting had fixed His canon against mowing!"

So I'm not mowing today, and I'm not mowing tomorrow either.