Hi gang, JimF here again. This month i'm posting a poem that was published in NEWN. I've read a lot of Robert Frost and one of his poems, "Mowing" has always bothered me, in that he refers to the tool as a 'scythe' When I was growing up, my father called it a 'scythe-and-snath' as the blade was the scythe and the handle the snath. So I wrote this poem in answer to Frost's. Enjoy.

The Sweetest Dream That Labor Knows
after Robert Frost’s “Mowing”

There’s something about a master-mower’s hands
around the gribs of a scythe-and-snath.
His right forearm along the wood for balance
and angle. His left arm pulls and piles the swaths.

There’s something in the swing, the whish, the whirr
of fleeing grasshoppers, the capacity
for going on for hours, the bond of man
and tool and swallows following after.

There’s something about a scythe-and-snath,
the rows of hay that lie behind the master.