I'd like to close with a poem I've had some fun with.
I read this to the librarians in Phoenix.
It's a poem that got to be accidentally religious.
But I am a very bad mechanic, a sort
of Stone Age fitter of pieces.
And I have a power mower.
I have to say that carefully always,
because somebody once referred to my paramour
when I read this poem.
This is two words.
P-O-W-E-R M-O-W-E-R, power mower.
I have a manual.
And I suppose if I did everything right.
I could put the thing to sleep in the winter
and keep the battery on trickle.
And then put it back together in the spring
and do all the things I'm supposed to
and push the button.
And it should start.
But it never does.
I mean, I do my theological lessons.
I read the manual.
I say my prayers.
I pour the holy oils.
And I try to get the right mixtures.
I can't call the soul out of this piece of junk.
And I conclude that this is a Catholic power mower.
If it were Protestant, we could argue this out
between our consciousness.
But this requires a priest.
And I have to call Sears, Roebuck
and eventually he comes.
And he brings the true sacrament,
and he pours the oils, and he pushes the button,
and the thing starts.
And once he has started it for me I am back in power.
But somehow that's a theological sequence.
And this is the poem.
"On the Orthodoxy and Creed of My Power Mower."
All summer in power, out roaring the bull fiend,
it raves on my lawn spewing into the dirty lung hung
on its side.
Myself, maddened by power, I ride the howl of hot new mown
sacks full.
The powder bursts of gnashed moles
runs till in one sweaty half day of the beast,
my lawn is lined to tidy passages.
So neatness from lunacy, the orderliness
of rage, Bedlam's Eden.
All calm now, the dead beast washed in cool light
and stalled.
Again and again all summer in power to touch it frenzies.
At falls dry last, I kneel to the manual to the word touch
and pour extreme unctions that the locked life
waken when called.
And do call year after year in season to the lunacy of power
and am not answered.
I probe, prime, pump and might as well
pray to headless stone gods, nothing.
Nothing I know wakens the power blast
hidden in it, which is no cause of Protestant conscience
to be worked out between me and the source
but a priest held power of maintenance.
Hours at last defeated, I call and its priest
comes with cups, knowledge, and the anointed touch that
does reach power and mystery.
The beast gasps, shakes, wavers deep in itself.
Then roars full to resurrection.
And here we come to cure green again.
Our triumph of faith, which is of course
that even the powerless and inept may ride fit power
once wakened by the anointed man believed in deeper
than conscience and defeat.
Whole in his knowledge given his touch
charged, the dangerous blind beast tame in service.