The grass has been waiting for me,
So much to say, it seems,
With so few to hear.
The winter rain has made it
Gleam with green
As it seems to share
How full the pinecones lean
And how yellow the honeysuckle.
Even the succulents are drenched with star blossom.
It has grown as high as the lupine
The monarchs dance around, before they fly
Like paper planes to the next rich nest.
The moss spreads out like a map
Of the untracked, and the cactus fields
Beam again, unrepentant, in sun.
The dark crevasse
Where the homeless sleep
Is now a lake of smoky glass
Where water shimmers in a dialog
Of sun and water moving, where
The still trees’ pulsing thought is seen.
Hidden ducks break the plane
And fracture the thousand-word picture
Of things that endure under sky
Into the waves illusion uses: The endlessness
Of pattern, color, shape, the truth
The defies containment in a brain –
The ducks themselves dissolve
Into the scene, as one realizes it was
The mind and not the eye that saw them.
The shadows then begin to shimmer
As if there’s no existence
In unrefracted light.
The grass notes how its limbs
Point straight up – like us –
To the sky.
New red buds on old grey trees,
New red branches, new green leaves,
And fresh red woodpecker head
To supervise the cleaning.
It remains a permanent mystery
How things get in and leave:
New orange-yellow flowers
In a happy sea of green,
Like certain offerings to sun
And the sun seems to answer back
By dappling the bending grass
With a coat like drops of rain
On fields reborn in green,
Like the past was never different
And you are foolish to even remember
And jasmine bells will always
Accompany you no matter
How the pathway turns.
The violence of water, too,
A fact that’s only captured now
In absence: The hanging
Inflamed roots,
Sand sprayed across the weeds,
Rocks trapped inside of pools.
The clover conjures a spiral of gnats
As the ivy floats up the tallest trees.
The hillside finds room,
Impossibly, for further paintings.
The fingers of grass point here and there
And shiver with awe,
Merely hoping I can feel
The same, or maybe knowing,
For they’re still as I doubt,
And wild while I imagine
The lack of any filter between us
To screen the call of the one.
The egret in the grass knows I’m here
For the pink in her feathers,
Her snake rhythm ways,
As she knows the mouse she’s stalking
Needs to touch the hilltop grass
Before she strikes.
The clouds of the moment
Are the patterns for the sway
Of vibrant grass.
The grey rolls in from the distance,
As if to seal the brightness and shade
Held in this instant,
The perfect light,
The perfect flower,
The blackening tree.
