Beth Oast Williams
It seems to me that landscape companies are beginning their work too early in the morning. This poem began one day when I woke up at 7:30 am to the sound of an army of leaf blowers. Our neighborhoods are loud with hired machines that try to change the way leaves fall, the way weeds grow. It's no longer gardeners working in yards for the pleasure of getting their hands dirty. The title hints at how I long to escape this noise and to wake up naturally to storm or sunrise and enjoy that spiritual connection.
Scaping
I wake to the storm
of leaf blowers
as if the wind
is not breath enough.
I want to hear
God's exhale against
my windows, want
to shudder at the urgency
of shingles falling
off the roof. I want to wake
with the scrape of holy
hands along the siding
of my house. I crave
the startle of God
shining a light in my face,
a power higher
than a man waving
a loud machine,
whacking at weeds.
Beth Oast Williams’s poetry has appeared in West Texas Literary Review, Wisconsin Review, Glass Mountain, GASHER Journal, Poetry South, Fjords Review, and Rattle's Poets Respond, among others. Her poems have been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her first chapbook, Riding Horses in the Harbor, was published in 2020.