Poem – Mowing Dead Grass After Church on Sunday

by Marcus on July 3, 2009

: Not my lawn. My lawn is dead. This “striped lawn” is not dead. Image via Wikipedia

My friend Tina who runs the blog tour spot is doingan event for Keri Wyatt Kent’s book Rest: Living in Sabbath Simplicity. I have not read the book–though I enjoy Sabbath books because I’m particularly bad about resting.

See, I do things like post on my blog during my July 4th weekend.

Both Keri and Tina have nice websites. I’d highly recommend you click over and check them out. (Keri has a Children’s Ministry channel at Christianity Today that is worth your time as well.)

All that to explain the poem I wrote, on prompt from my creative friend Tina who continues to push the boundaries of social media marketing for Christian publishing.

Mowing Dead Grass After Church on Sunday

Stubborn life knows no rest.
Our desert lawn grows tall enough
to tickle my fat dog’s chest
in just one week. I don’t water
and still it grows, not green, not
lush, not Whitman’s fresh cut
hair of graves, but burrs and tentacle
grass like dead spiders, brittle
brown in the heat. No poet’s passed
here under my army surplus boot-
soled feet, but the dead demand
attention from suburban morticians
trimming the nails of corpse plots
with coughing, greasy Troybilts
hacking, at the highest setting,
their zombie lawns, flinging mulched
stickers into shins. Here’s the truth,
I’ll admit my sin. I love this Sabbath
work, my mower’s loud drone
swallows the noisy world whole.

Living in Sabbath simplicity (cballan.wordpress.com)
“My Holy Nation” (TheHighCalling.org)
Deep Breathing for the Soul ” Seasons of doubt and laughter (keriwyattkent.com)
Andy Crouch at Laity Lodge: What Keeps Us From Being Creative? (markdroberts.com)

Tagged as: christianity, Keri Wyatt Kent, lawn, poem, Religion and Spirituality, sabbath, zombies

{ 1 trackback }

I Should Have Worked on the Sabbath | HighCallingBlogs.com: July 15, 2009 at 1:18 pm

{ 11 comments }

1 deb July 3, 2009 at 6:09 pm: oh perfect timing to stop over here.. that is a great poem !!!
2 Diane Komp July 3, 2009 at 6:45 pm: Have you found Lyn Cryderman’s book “Glory Land”?
3 spaghettipie July 3, 2009 at 9:31 pm: I think you just might be a genius.
Loved the poem, and thanks for participating!
4 Marcus July 3, 2009 at 11:31 pm: deb, thanks. Your photography is wonderful.

Diane, I’ve not read that one yet, but I’ll have to check it out.

Tina/spaghettipie, thanks for asking. I think I may have to participate in everyone of these. I hope they help the writers some. I promise I’m no genius, but I do read a lot of poetry and I had a huge amount of time to kill waiting for a haircut. Thus this poem.
5 Susan July 4, 2009 at 10:52 am: Oh my goodness, “suburban morticians trimming the nails of corpse plots”, I cracked up. Meanwhile there are some thistles in my yard that need attention! Great poem Marcus!
6 Sam Van Eman July 8, 2009 at 10:01 am: I don’t know where Tina’s genius remark was directed, but poems like this one say it should be here.
7 Sam Van Eman July 9, 2009 at 10:59 am: Testing coComment, Marcus.
8 Marcus July 9, 2009 at 11:17 am: 1-2-3. Can you hear me, Sam?
9 Sam Van Eman July 9, 2009 at 11:39 am: Just heard you in coComment though I received your e-reply 20 minutes ago. Still, I heard you. I’ll keep playing with it.
10 Marcus July 9, 2009 at 11:59 am: I don’t think cocomment is intended to be a real time tool, just helpful for keeping track of multiple threads. I’m looking into again, but their add-on for firefox doesn’t work with version 3.5 (which I just installed YESTERDAY… drat.)
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