Weekends Before

Not like those times in the 90’s

when you worked bare chested down the hillside

in your 501’s and your Craftsman work boots

trying to find satisfactory purchase in that dry, loose soil of your Big House on the Hill,

and when you felt yourself going down,

with no acacia whip to grab onto,

you felt the pull of gravity,

you just stopped fighting and went with it,

because you had already placed all the

potentially-dangerous-in-a-fall tools

out of fall’s way. 

Then you’d haul

all

the clippings

up the hill

and tie them in bundles with jute twine pulled into bow knots across the calluses on the outside of your ring fingers

while singing “Bringing in the Sheaves” on repeat in your head

and counting blue cars going north on the freeway down the hill.