Photo by Niklas Ohlrogge on Unsplash
In my backyard, dandelions have assembled,
twelve pastel tribes. Together, their yellow
heads like piles of stones form springtime altars.
And they grow so because I have not mowed
my lawn. By and by the daylight journeys by,
adds another stone to praise the spring. An altar
says my grandfather, is a remembering thing,
what Moses built when he saw into Canaan,
the promised land, where honey and milk flowed,
and I know no one bothered him to cut the lawn.
In the front yard, I expected tiger lily blooms
where four or five clusters of wide-bladed grass
rise by the driveway. Now a single daffodil
stands at the edge of my grass and gravel.
Like that lonesome usher, my grandfather stooping
at the door of his church, it welcomes me across
the threshold onto the lawn. And the grass there
rises high and higher past my ankles to my knees
in praise of nimbus, of cirrus in the wild sanctuary
under the sky. Look, how the lawn proceeds
toward my flower garden to hide the boot prints
made the rainy day I plant my white hyacinths,
violets, and a pair of sapling lilacs in the clay.
I offer mulch to encircle this plot and seed
this trench of footsteps to enclose my garden.
The wild of my lawn has met the garden edge,
and hyacinths bow their blooms as though they
lead me in prayer. How long ago my grandfather
would have mowed my lawn. I see him now ride
row by row over the molehills just beneath the sod,
his Gravely tractor the color and smell of rust.
He bounces in his sulky seat, grooms the uneven
texture of the grass smooth. A lawn is a polished place.
I notice in a plot half-cut, a certain palette—the stem
of the grass closest earth and unsunned swells pastel,
but the high grass grows green. What can these shades
changing in the sun mean? Grass is not a lawn
until my grandfather makes it one. He recalls
that I at three stand waist-high to grass and hay
in his back lot, more gold than green there. I hold
a wildflower to my face. By this unkempt moment,
he remembers me, my untamed gesture. A flower
touches my lips and nose. He maintains his lawn,
my youth, has no regard for how the hours pass,
a wristwatch unwound and unmoving, a pair of shadows
lengthen across our faces. I stand in sunshine at midday,
uncut, unbowed, his wildflower. The hay has its season,
so he mows—he mows because this is how one grows.
Ruth Towne's poetry has been featured in Maine's Best Emerging Poets 2019, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and Voices Literary Project. She is a Stonecoast MFA graduate. She lives in Southern Maine and aspires to be a respected gardener someday.