The Chainsaw Days of September - Poem and MePhone Photograph

The Chainsaw Days of September

As mandated by the recent hurricane

These are the chainsaw days, humid and hot

Wind-blasted shingles and wind-blasted trees

And clearing windfall in the gasping heat:

Litter to the burn-piles, firewood to the stacks

Even the bees seem tired, but the hummingbirds

Around the feeders form flittery clouds

As if they have suddenly received orders

For their long autumn flights to Mexico

But as for me, I work and sweat and stink

Pausing sometimes to watch the sky, and dream

(As Freud did not say, sometimes a chainsaw is just a chainsaw. Don’t grasp at metaphors that aren’t there; people will stare at you. And if you grasp at a chainsaw you will lose your hand. And then people will stare at you even more while taking MePhone pictures of you in your agony. They won't do anything for you, of course.)