The Grass Greens
May 15 2014


After each hard winter
I forget how quickly it turns.

Brown, thatched, patchy,
the grass greens
the first warm day.
When snow is still in the shadows,
and it's cold enough at night
for the ditches and ruts

to crust with ice.

One morning, it's sunny and green,

as if it snapped into spring

as I slept.

If only I were so hardy,
even though I'm as hungry for sun
as tenaciously rooted;
and even though I, too
spent the dark season
hunkered underground.

I can see where the mice nested;
tufts of grass and thread,
matted fur
the shaggy dog shed.
The worn trails
where they silently scurried
under warm layers of snow.

Except for the explorers and entrepreneurs,
the adventurous few
who slipped under the door
after warmth and food.
And quickly fell prey,
my baited traps
the cat lying in wait.

Because winter takes its toll.
Leaving me
a little older,
skin pale, body weak.
And scattered patches of dead grass,
straw against the green.


I resist every time I feel the urge to write one of my so-called "nature" poems. But I live an uneventful life on the edge of a forest; so this is what I see, and what comes to mind. So every once in awhile, I relent. "Write what you know" they say; and I have to admit, it feels good!

This is a classic lyric poem: a description of nature, run through with subjective feeling and experience ("an intense personal quality expressive of feeling or emotion in music or poetry" -- Merriam Webster).

What caught my attention is actually how slow it is to green out here: all the lawns in the city seem to have turned from one day to the next, and I can almost hear the lawnmowers roaring. But here, it's unseasonably cold and spring unusually slow; and well into it, the grass still has that brown thatched look, desolate and drained.

I particularly like the power of using "green" as a verb. And also at the end of a line, where it especially resonates. And so the choice of title.

There are observations about mice and grass; which in turn say more about me, a decided homebody: how the survivors are rooted, while the casualties are the impatient and brave adventurers.

Do I protest too much by saying that "body weak" is more poetic licence than fact? Because really, I don't actually spend all winter in lazy dormancy! ...Although the poem is a rumination on the relentless passage of time, the slow toll of age.

(And while I'm claiming poetic licence, let me make it clear that there is no cat. Cats creep me out. I'm a fiercely partisan dog person, after all!)