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.