A very sudden poem

A buzz ratchets into my aural foreground; my hearing gets antsy and raw. There is an infinity of mowers, whackers and chainsaws out for their first tear-up today ... Any of us who live with extreme sensitivities in our sensory capacity will understand how maddened a nervous system can become when the world outside sounds like War of the Weedwhackers. I stand up and head for the window, spotting two whackers and one mower; my ears pick up at least two more machines farther off. Shit.

I sit down and fume ... then become aware that I'm holding my breath. My middle fingers are tearing at the cuticles of my thumbs, and I'm biting the inside of my cheeks.

Awareness is the bomb, I tell ya ...

... So I stop the biting, the picking, the holding of breath ... and I pick up my pen:

Machine = NOISE = threat

DISCERN.

First: listen, 

and breathe.

Tend to the thuddering

heart with the palm,

the psalm

of your hand.

What is being

mown, then?

What, here,

is dying?

Some grass ...

and some bugs,

... some of the

smallest who serve.

Look: you are

safe in your home,

with your pen. Soon

you will scent

the release

of the spirit 

of grass,

and your mouth

will fall

open and up

with recall

for a child

who is holding

the grass

to her nose,

and green ... I am

green with it

Now I am

home.