“Kids: They dance before they learn there isn't anything that isn't music.”
- William Stafford
When I read the poem that I've posted here, it reminded me of a childhood memory that's remained vivid to me all these years later.
I grew up a farm boy, accustomed to wide open spaces. I had four male cousins who were brothers and we were all pretty close in age, give or take a few years. Early on, they were raised out in the country too, but when I was about six, they moved into the big town in our community, population 13,000. They lived in a house on McPherson Street. I was there a lot and, boy, we played hard at that house, every kind of game boys played then. It was the rough and tumble 60s, no guardrails, and boys didn't quit playing anything until at least one person was bleeding. I learned to ride my bike out in front of that house. You never forget where you learned to ride a bike.
One day early in their residence at the new house, I was there and we were playing some game in the front yard. One of the cousins said to me, “Whatever you do, don't go into that yard” pointing to the one two doors down. “That's old lady Nemo's house and she'll get a mess of you. She's mean.”
I guess I noted that, but I didn't know anything about town life and nearby neighbors and such, so it didn't stick. Plus, I was seven. I had a lot of things on my mind besides city etiquette .
Not long after the warning, I was back in town with the cousins. We were playing baseball out in the front yard and an errant ball dribbled over into old lady Nemo's flower bed. I reacted like any normal boy; I trotted over to make the retrieval. I was just raising up out of the begonias, ball in hand, when a woman was on me with a broom, screeching, “You get out of here!” She was hot on my heels as I scampered back to the friendly zone of my cousins' yard. They stood frozen and wide-eyed watching this unfold. She paused there at yards edge, glaring at us with her broom held at port arms. I don't think she said, “I'll grind your bones to make my bread” but it wouldn't have been surprising if she had.
We watched her stride back to her house, broom held high, and after a pause one of the cousins turned to me and said, “Told you so.”
It certainly wouldn't be the last time in life similar words were directed at me.
The Man Into Whose Yard You Should Not Hit Your Ball
Thomas Lux
Each day mowed
and mowed his lawn, his dry quarter-acre,
the machine slicing a whisp
from each blade's tip. Dust storms rose
around the roar, 6 p.m. every day,
spring, summer, fall. If he could mow
the snow he would.
On one side, his neighbors the cows
turned their backs to him
and did what they do to the grass.
Where he worked, I don't know,
but it set his jaw to: tight.
His wife a cipher, shoebox tissue,
a shattered apron. As if
into her head he drove a wedge of shale.
Years later, his daughter goes to jail.
Mow, mow, mow his lawn
gently down the decade's summers.
On the other side lived mine and me,
across a narrow pasture, often fallow ---
a field of fly balls, the best part of childhood
and baseball. But if a ball crossed his line,
as one did in 1956,
and another in 1958,
it came back coleslaw — his lawnmower
ate it up, happy
to cut something, no matter
what the manual said
about foreign objects,
stones, or sticks.