Mowing

Yesterday, I sat in a waiting room 

with three eighty year old women, 

each waiting for her husband to finish a brain MRI. 

I was there alone, waiting for my name to be called,

so that I could wait to enter the patient area, 

wait to put on my green not-quite-big-enough gown,

wait to get my contrast dye IV, 

wait for the last person to leave the scanner, 

wait while in the scanner -- the machine, 

as close to a coffin as I will ever get -- 

banging and screeching around me

for forty long minutes, nothing to do but think. 

I thought of those women, those men, 

the brains surgeries the men were facing.

One woman, all smiles and grins, until her husband left, 

how she bowed down, how the color in her drained, 

how she held her head with both hands. 

I thought about the last time I was having an MRI, 

My love in the waiting room, driving the car. 

Everywhere for those forty minutes. 

How she was right about almost everything:

sleeping together is better than sleeping alone, 

eating a treat is better with another person, 

driving is better, shopping is better, movies are better, 

talking is better.  Yes, talking with another person 

is so much better than talking alone in your head. 

Last weekend I mowed my yard, then plowed down 

my gardens with the mower.  I was killing everything in sight. 

Angry, my mower and I reconfigured everything, 

wiped it down to its roots then I stood there, 

my hands on my hips, king of a very small kingdom. 

Today, I mowed my yard, the Sweeney's yard, Margaret's yard, 

and I would have kept going all of the way down Dellwood, 

if I had the gas and the invitation to do so. 

Not angry, but sad.  This time trying to create rows, 

perfectly crafted rows.  One row for the things I did wrong. 

Then, one row for the things I did right. 

So many for the things she knew how to do well. 

The next for the things I cannot fix, 

another for the things I will never know or feel again. 

One for the ways in which I am lonely, 

one for the things I now see and understand.  

So many, wishing I could set things straight. 

And several wondering what we might do today, together: 

drive to the country, stop in a place we have never eaten, 

buy some marbles, buy some rocks, talk about our weeks, 

her hand on my head, my hand on her knee.  

They say that it is good to cry in the shower, 

but I tell you, it is good to cry while mowing, 

the sound drowning out your tears and twists.

The sound drowning out other sounds too:

the sound of fear in a waiting room, 

the sound of just two feet in house,

the sound of the neighbors laughing, 

the sound of no one talking to you, 

the sound of death's sweet whisper, 

the sound of things breaking all around you, 

rust growing, skin wrinkling, dozen and dozens 

of lonely gray hairs popping out of your head.