Grass

To be honest I am terrified
by the indomitable grass
which frozen dead in winter’s grasp
will yet rise year after year undeterred.
The strength of it feels coarse
upon my temporary skin,
such that farmers in their honesty offend
me; then I imagine I could prefer
the glass and steel and stone of towns.
It is the same grass
every frozen blade of it intact
year after year—anyway so it seems—
but one year I am alive, one I am dead;
one year a great man, the next a fool;
sometimes beautiful, sometimes alone:
and the simple, silent grass
will freeze, unfreeze
and never know.






February 2020