The Lawn; Or A Story About a Guy’s Lawn and How He Becomes One With It
The grass is dewy. It feels like bouncing on an air bubble or in a novelty bounce house. Kentucky bluegrass. A soft pine smell wafts through the air. His head fills with purple prose and romantic ideals.
Luther tops up his mower with a hefty slug of petrol before starting it up. 4.5 horsepower. A 23 inch blade that he had just sharpened last week. A cherry red finish that had faded and needed to be repainted. But that was a
The task of mowing the lawn was his weekly spiritual ritual that initiated the weekend’s tranquil start. His wife, Alicia, offered to buy him an automatic riding mower with a much higher capacity to mow the lawn a few years back, but he refused. He told her that he enjoyed the mower he had. He told her that it helped him commune with God, though he never seemed to hear any divine voice with the whir of the engine going.
If that’s the case, she said, then wouldn’t you just want a manual lawn mower.
And perhaps if Luther were younger, leaner, filled with more gumption and energy, then he might have said yeah, sure, he would enjoy a manual lawn mower despite it probably taking twice, if not three times, longer to cut the lawn. But he was getting up there in age. His joints distilled low energy into an arthritic happiness.
The mist of the soft orange sun peaks over the horizon to greet him. A wild mushroom of clouds sprouts wildly miles above him. Luther takes a deep breath in. He gets a hefty waft of petrichor. The ozone begins to crush his lungs, and the bubble in his throat begins to burst.
He falls to the ground. Gripped by entropy. Luther melds into the infinity of his lawn.
Fred Aiken Writing 