The Mower

Batter bulging toward birth
waits to be poured and baked.
Laundry sloshes with total abandon
toward freshness once again, when
suddenly discordantly
straining my every sense --
heartless grinding of mower mingles
with life's restoratives.

Will he see my seedlings, tiny, fail;
come upon my transplants broadside
with undiscerning eye;
spare my berry canes and bushes midst
thorns and twining vines?
From his canopied, four-wheel throne
distanced mechanical
night he know of back breaking days,
aching nights with stiffened limbs
AND
will his heart have ever leapt to
nature's healing and design?

SO -- this is how God must feel:
creative, anguished eye
upon the earth.

Andrea Wild, OSF, was a Franciscan sister engaged in the ministry of prayer and retreat work at Abba House of Prayer in Logan, Ohio when this poem appeared.