My father didn't use a mower at first —
grass grows daylong
in springtime California, tillering and knotting

new joints to hike higher.
He had a scythe. He swung it, two handed,
a ragged bite.

Machines, tools, never his
element. The Mustang caught itself
on fire, bikes stacked up with stuck and slipping chains.

The woodshed holds useful things —
logs he sawed and split down to kindling,
worn-in work gloves — and remainders:

brown deer mice he once snagged to make pets
a unicycle, flat tired
retired to a hook

and the long scythe, arced and toothed and
flat to the wall, delicate with rust.
A garden outlives him but so does this:

wind shifting gold and green
feather and foxtail and snake rattle awns
a child running through the head-high stalks.