The Yard Man: An Election Poem - Lorna Goodison

 

When bullet wood trees bear

the whole yard dreads fallout

from lethal yellow stone fruit, 

and the yard man will press 

the steel blade of a machete 

to the trunk in effort to control 

its furious firing. He will dash 

coarse salt at its roots to cut 

the boil of leaves, try slashing 

the bark so it will bleed itself 

to stillness, and yet it will shoot 

until the groundcover is acrid 

coffin color, the branches dry bones. 

Under the leaves it lives, 

poverty’s turned-down image 

blind, naked, one hand behind 

one before. The yard’s first busha

was overseer who could afford 

to cultivate poverty’s lean image, 

but good yard man says since we 

are already poor in spirit, fire for it. 

http://bombmagazine.org/article/2533/four-poems