We all are mowers.
The grass is lowly, struggling always up but
not far, blades bent down by feet, paws,
wheels, but standing high enough to cast
a sunrise shadow on its downslope self.
It always comes back,
surges up through sidewalk or churns of mud,
tenacity outsizing its minute green tips.
It feeds a passing cat needing a tonic, a kid
seeking a slice of whistle, or actual grazers who
crop it as soon as it can stand on its own one foot.
Not to notice is normal,
but grass takes that personally, threatens to
strike, stop growing, doesn’t really mean it.
Do grass a favor and lie down, accept its edge
of itch, its inhabitant insects, the histamine tickle
that has cushioned centuries of outdoor couplings.
Submit to the sky,
which is all grass can see save the forest of siblings
surrounding it. The damp skin of the earth is a
platform for viewing the wind at work, and if
it’s dry, then let green go and lie down golden-
grained, brown meeting the granulated ground,
and grass will weave you
a dying nest to leave in, but only until
the next rain, the next worming invigoration
that commences its endless sunlit revival.
—
Heidi Mordhorst publishes regularly for both adults and children, most recently in Entre Magazine of the Arts Vol. 2. She taught in primary classrooms for 37 years and has been on the NCTE Excellence in Poetry Award Committee and a Cybils Award Judge. She’s now a Teaching Artist with the Maryland State Arts Council and her organization WHISPERshout Writing Workshop and lives with her wife in Silver Spring.
