Timmy so big he’s awkward as a loon on land,
_____but when he gets on his backhoe
__________and his brother Luke on his Bobcat,
you can believe we were born for machinery.
_____They get the big maple ready to go,
__________Timmy rubs the backhoe’s neck
against its trunk, slowly up and down until
_____it begins to crack, as we all would,
__________and falls through a perfect tunnel
of trees, wild hair every which way, Luke
_____scooping it, and the smaller ones,
__________into the huge dump truck. Then
they really begin, Timmy with his delicate
_____biting and scooping, clanging the small head
__________down on the cement walk,
lifting a chunk to the dump truck
_____like a dead mouse, Luke backing
__________and twirling in place. They do-si-do
to the low rumble of motors. They come right
_____to the edge of the house’s foundation,
__________they bite out a row
of stones around the old ice-house, they leave
_____a perfect cliff, you should see it,
__________roots exposed like the wiring
of the world, the smell of dirt and rocks and roots.
_____Another thing: yesterday, they said,
__________at six-thirty a double rainbow
landed about here. They said it was a once-
_____in-a-decade rainbow, and I missed it.
__________This is what I mean about them,
what I can’t get enough of. They make me
_____want to start over from scratch.