Like Patching a Flat and the Superchief Goes By

(Homage to Ramon Guthrie)

Flat

footed I stood in thick and uncivilized woods. Briars tangled me, vines held fast my sweaty self gardening there. My machete snickered. "How's this for cultivation? It's wild, boss, how you lay wilderness flat."

Comes, with an elegant leap and the wittiest whoop, capering lithely, quite at ease in the trickiest pas des dieux, Apollo off duty, Fred Astaire as Silenus, Pan piping Mozart, dancing as he comes.

All

around him the wilderness danced to his calling. Vines turned to Bernini columns. He gave new point to the briars and noted arrangements where I, hacking in panic, had heaped slash in the paths and near spoiled all.

Yes, I'd been wrong, but how bright his clean Tightness shone now! Flickering thickets showed my way, song shaped street corners in the brush, grass thatched me the nicest patches - which tripped me as I came tripping, apeing him, hollering Yes!

Flat

I lie now, my knees sore and skinned, my machete tarnished, duller, muttering coarse sarcasms at my sad downfall, despising the flop that I am at my hacking trade. I smile, though, humming his tune. Humming flat.