The Perfect Lawn - Sept 10 2026

 

The Perfect Lawn

Sept 10 2026

I scatter seed

and wait for rain.

If it wasn’t taken for granted 

that in the fullness of time

grass simply appears,

this would seem as miraculous

as water into wine

the loaves and the fishes.

That it eats light, and lives on air

should put us to shame

for our tempestuous lives

incessant greed.

If only we high maintenance creatures

could live so serenely

and with such frugality.

Of course, the lawn is unnatural;

the seed, selected and bred,

the landscape a monoculture.

No wildflowers.

No dandelion, clover, or sedge.

No hardy weeds

that survive drought and neglect

will be permitted to mar 

this temperamental grass.

Instead, the conceit of the perfect lawn,

surrounding our homes 

like a green palisade

as if to defend our notion of order.

As if uniformity

was the highest ideal

and diversity flawed. 

Which is odd, because we are not the same;

eah of us

of mixed blood, uncertain heritage,

with weaknesses and strengths

uniquely our own.

As adaptable

as mongrel dogs

and plants with hybrid vigour.

I take pains

to scatter it evenly,

identical seed

from the palm of my hand

over rich black soil

spread on level ground.

I’m starting to fit the stereotype of an old bourgeois white guy, fussing about my lawn, despairing over the weeds and bare spots. As if it matters. 

But still, I scatter seed. As evenly as I can. And thinking not only about all the miracle of germination and the complex life lying dormant in my hand, but also about my battle against a nature that abhors such uniformity. 

A sobering thought in a political era in which an increasingly prevalent and confident right wing celebrates blood-and-soil citizenship, promotes narrow ethnic nationalism, and promulgates xenophobic anti-immigrant conspiracies. That demonizes otherness. Not to mention their strident homophobia and their myth of a homogeneous past, a lost golden age of prosperity and “family values”. As if diversity was a weakness instead of a strength. As if this isn’t what makes nature so resilient, not to mention the source of her beauty and abundance.

One can only hope that the political and cultural pendulum finds its centre again. (Of course, it never does. It’s a pendulum, after all, and will find its other extreme soon enough.)

The hypocrisy and pointlessness of my manicured lawn (at least my ideal lawn, since the real one never even gets close!) is not lost on me.