Yard Work

Yard work began on the grounds of a Church of Christ where Dad preached.

A half acre of lawn, flower beds, trees, shrubbery.

Weeding, mowing, raking, clipping, pruning, aerating, thatching, seeding, sweeping, edging.

All labor by hand,

including pushing a flywheel mower

to the Moon and back.

Dad taught me how to work

and I went to work.

No radio.

My older sister never joined us.

Dad and I rarely worked together.

When we did, we never talked about Jesus,

probably sports or Vietnam.

Never about the silent unraveling

of our family due to him.

I never told him I became an atheist

after he baptized me on my tenth birthday.

Dad favored simple tools,

nothing newfangled.

One of his maxims: “Use the right tools for the job, or don’t try.”

His favorite tool: a rake with tines that trilled through the leaves.

We raked a million leaves together

with our unique system of gathering.

The beagle blasted through every pile.

We played football in those leaves.

Dad would float a pass over a pile.

I would lay out and snare it,

the beagle occasionally intercepting.

My favorite tool: the stand-up weed puller.

He paid me a nickel for every weed.

Weeds paid for all my football cards.

I organized them not by teams,

rather, the best names:

Butkus, Sixkiller, Hamburger, Grabowski.

Dad died last year.

I was there at the end.

I bought a house in Coos Bay

to escape his death,

with a wild, forsaken yard:

waist high grass, English ivy, blackberries, weeds galore.

My first morning,

I went to work

with the husky at my side,

with the same tools,

the same old technique,

except for classic country

on the radio.