The Reaper

Clearing brush through woods where one
Great pride is still the summer’s lie,
Although in places higher branches try
The aphid green of fall, the sun

Still brushing through the mountain air
With touches of a tropic breeze,
My cutters, in their wanton rush to meadows, seize
An indescribable – yet ferny – strand of forest hair

That, falling to the flower-littered barber’s floor,
Slyly vanishes in the pumpkin brown of fall,
Just one more cut, as if the trail were all
That counted, as if death was what it waited for –

Brave new clippers, that in one hardened pass
Can change a statue to a blade of grass.

September 10th, 1994