I

Seven past
twelve. The silence I hear

still is not hers.

II

Dilligent mows riverbanks
three times fortnightly. In
cases that move her to mow

in the evening, the bright
mud, a shining cradle-cap,
smells to her of a memory

of torrents, torrents
and flooding--

flooding whose greenstick
currents snapped,
whose freshwater urgency chilled
like darkcore. Even still,

she leaves here bearing
the mottlings and pinpricks left
on her hard (and soft) palate

by desolate, unmarked
weeks of inhaling runoff

and silt. She waits a bit, kills
the motor, adds some oil--lights a cig.

III

Whenever she comes to have
mown in the morning, Dilligent

makes time to linger
and watch. Her slate Zippo
tingles, stowed

in her dark locket,

as twenty-two million
gray-green blades
commence a vegetative labor--
to collect the morning

freshness, her stillness,
and the light
of the culminating
sun. Collected and

crushed, like petals
beneath pestles,
they thicken, thicken,
thicken the leaves. The

baby grass
bristles in
precisely.

Then she lets herself breathe
in deeply, as the daybreak

dew reprises itself
on her dark, bare, muscled
back. At noon, the sun

stops.

IV

Twelve times out
of seven hundred, I know,
she even must mow
at midnight. The myrmidon

riverbanks will hear
her approach, and will have hidden,
hidden themselves with leaves.

Far away, the sorrowing
cottonwoods will low
with--and long for--the wind. Fish
silhouettes will leap and gulp
at the breath-laden air--yet

still she'll push.

V

She told me why, once, why,
why she will
push
that ramshackle mower
back and across
three times over--the fields

at stony standstill, the moon
glowering--and still I know

she will. She will.

Barely roused,
one midnight, I
heard her
say it, as I watched
her knot her
hair in braids. "Look,"

said Dilligent, dark

eyes roiling, "wool's warm
plenty, and this coat
fits snug. At night,

the grass may stand
still, but
the clouds lean close.
The chill's

in the air but my blood
beats hot, deep
in the lungs. You're soft

and don't understand--" she kissed
me then (tasting

of
cloves) "--but if

I stay late
enough the drizzle
may come." Come kiss me

again, my Megan.

VI

Still, come those violent
midnights, I'll miss her:
I'll finger my opposite
locket, soon to dream
of cottonwoods deluged, deluged
by shadows and salt--

soon to imagine I see
her, a woman with inlays
of granite, squinting, barely
smiling, meeting the mist

and the moistness, giving
her face, sun-
worn, for the droplets
to kiss.