Murkiness: November 2004 Archives

The finger that my hedge trimmer tried to devour last weekend is almost healed. I had already cut a heavy duty electrical cord, and I was almost finished with the front hedges, having borrowed a cord from Chris next door, when I reached down to brush aside some clippings and the trimmer lept and took a bite of my finger. Yes, like that saw in "Out, Out" by Frost, the hedge trimmer had a life of its own. But luckily, unlike the boy in the poem who dies, I was able to go about my affairs after Ann did some first aid to stop the bleeding. The only evidence now is a flap of skin and some soreness. Amazing how the body heals.

Ann says it wasn't the fault of the trimmer that I almost lost my finger. She doesn't believe a trimmer can have a mind of its own. She believes personification is nothing more than a poetic device. She says I almost lost my finger because I wasn't wearing safety gloves. And she says I give the trimmer a life and mind of its own merely to mythologize my all too human life. OK, so I won't mention the heroic stamina involved in running the Himalayan peaks of the Illinois Valley Relay race, or that J the cat uses his feet to write poems on my laptop, or the the fact that my tomato plants this late in the year are still producing tomatoes.