Grass erupts slowly, locking the soil in frail roots.
Without these tenoned fingers earth would be as sea,
drifting, unsure. It is a sort of knowledge,
gripping together, confirming that hill’s shape.
Do not forget the grass; that trodden softness
could only be an innocence that insists, comes back,
season by growing season. It cannot stop itself.
Though you kill it, grass does not seem to die.
Rocks, morticed in themselves, do not require it,
nor does its colour clutch the spaces of the desert.
Its absence is death’s sign, brooding its own mystery.
Grass exists. All life revolves around its rooted blade.
And yet grass does not care. Accepting without flower,
it seeds on plains or in cracked rocks, indifferent
to a touch that sears the granite. Grass
moves on, impotent in will, a rooted apathy
exposed to hoof and fire. It cannot stop itself.
Grass waits the mower’s knife, the ditcher’s spade.