Pine Sap, Sawdust, Sweat & the 4th of July

Yard Work
by John Birkbeck

She's hot —
she's snappish
with the yard boy,
a 51-year-old Paisan
(her very own age),
who's high on her smell,
but too blitzed
on weed and coca
to snap under the matronisation
and nervous contempt that
she summons up for him
with brittle fingers snapping;
but her edgy calm
belies her inner volcano,
for she, too, grew up in Italy —
“Do you think you can
remember to weed the hostas?”
she snaps.
His own riper smell
seeps between their class divisions,
but both write sonnets
in the same two
languages.

---

One thing I've learned about long weekends is that often times getting back to work means a guy can rest. This will be one of those long weekends. Before 7 AM today, I was back finishing a tree trimming project that started on Sunday.

What I've learned about tree trimming is that it's like taking a sip out of a spitoon -- once you start it's hard to stop. The four trees I spent four hours trimming today were not even on the tree-trimming radar screen, when we started trimming Sunday morning. After the regular shade trees and a couple of pine trees along the driveway were done, my wife suggested we trim a couple of branches from one of the "cove pine trees." That led to a major trim job on that tree. Then, as I sat on steps sipping my water, I got the idea to trim the other four cove trees.

On so today, in the cool morning air, I once again began to smell the pine sap, get sawdust in my face and sweat in my eyes. I jokingly mentioned to the wife that Lincoln freed the slave nearly 150 years ago. She looked at me -- sweat dripping from every pore in my body -- and said the word of the slaves being freed hadn't reached her plantation yet and I'd better get back to work.

After showering and have lunch, I called my buddy out in the timber land of Oregon to catch up on things. I told him of my tree trimming and he wanted to know what kind of chainsaw I used. I said I used a pruning shears and a hand saw. He was disappointed. I told him I do have a small electric chainsaw that I inherited from my Dad. He said the sight of me tangled in the trees with 3,000 feet of power chord wasn't a good visual.

So it goes...my 4th of July memory for 2006.