The man pushed his gas-powered, unassisted drive lawn mower back and forth across the lawn. He muscled the machine forward and back, left and right, in a search for perfectly straight lines. The sun beat down on him, then flared in his eyes as the hours passed.
At last he released the dead man’s bar. As the engine sputtered to an exhausted stop, he raised both fists to the sky in triumph. But he froze, as in the new deep silence he heard something. A small sound, but of words that could break stars. A voice of all voices echoing a simple thing like a fugue. Finally, he made sense of it.
And God said to the man, “You missed a spot.”
Since that day, the man has been on his knees searching for that spot. Some day, he may sit up and ask, “Can you show it to me?” On that day he will have found it.
