One of the old-timers I cut grass for
summers to make money for gas and lps, 
after I’d bagged all the clippings
and hauled the bags to the curb
would invite me to sit on a patio chair 
and pour me a glass of cool water 
out of a clay pitcher  
and offer me a peppermint 
in its cellophane wrapper.

I’d be miserable hot, shirt soaked with sweat, 
wanting to get on to the next lawn 
or get down into the woods 
at the end of the cul-de-sac
where I could sneak a cigarette, 
but he’d ask me plans for my life 
or share tidbits of history he’d picked up
back when he was a teacher
at a university.

I’d work that peppermint around in my mouth,
the disk dissolving, coating  
with its crisp burn, listening or answering 
depending on the moment,
never going too deep into my own life,
for to do so felt like giving him something
that hadn’t been earned, 
and also because the path before me,
overgrown and dense,
ran straight into the blinding sun.

When there was nothing to say,
we’d sit in the shade, old and young,
amid the smell of cut grass and wild onion,
admiring the cleanly edged walkway
the gentle grade, and watch hungry sparrows 
come to the clipped lawn 
to hunt desperate brown moths
that had the roof sheared off their home.