Complementary to our Poem-A-Day emails, we'll be posting poetry from local poets on our blog each day for the remainder of April. Later this week we'll be focusing on poems from your very own Grass Roots staff members, but today we have a poet from Nancy Carol Moody's new collection, "Photograph With Girls." Don't miss Nancy's poetry reading (along with Quinton Hallett) on Monday, April 26th at 7pm.
A note preceding today's poem...
Last week my landlord knocked on my door and offered to mow my grass for me. I looked beyond him at the yard, where the emerald-green, knee-high fronds were waving and bowing in the morning sunlight.
"Oh..." I said, "no, no, sorry, I've been out of town... --and the weather has been so wet lately..."
"I really don't mind," he offered again, "I'm happy to mow it for you."
"I'll take care of it," I said.
It's true I'd been out of town -- but I was also enjoying the ragged clumps in some primal way -- our little house was beginning to resemble a jungle refuge. I spent the following afternoon weeding, mulching, and pushing the mower back and forth. And on some deep, compulsively tidy, domineering level, I loved it. The grass was so long and thick I had to mow it on the highest mower setting--the mowed tracks behind me stood up shorn and uneven like a punk haircut. Here and there I swerved around dandelions and left daisies standing. I smelled the cut grass and felt immensely satisfied.
~April
FIRST MOWING
Nancy Carol Moody
The back-fence neighbor
is mowing his lawn:
seasonal slough, his
boots bogged to the ankles.
Suddenly, inexplicably,
I desire this, too.
I step up to my yard
and move into the grass.
Remind me
what it is I thought
I despised: the lawn's
luminous fronds, dauntless stalks
succulent from immeasurable rain.
The holy mud they thrive in.
Chlorophyll so indecent
it takes my breath.
How it stains,
oh the green glorious stain.
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