Intrigue or perfection? You choose.

Okay, so perfectly manicured lawns have their place, but doesn't the grass Janice describes here make you want to find a blanket and a picnic basket and spend a few glorious hours stretched out in the sun...a spring breeze blowing gently through the blades and across your face? I passed a patch of clover yesterday, so appealing I wished I could do just that. And this morning, as I admired the lovely yellow wildflowers sprinkled across our yard, I was sad as I realized they'll all be gone as soon as we cut the grass.

2010 Poetry Parade: Day 27


Note to the King of Green Lawn Service
by
Janice Townley Moore

Your grass fails to intrigue,
programmed as cloned blades--
bermuda or centipede.
No pleasant wild onion reek,
luck of the four-leafed clover.
Where lies the allure of strawberries,
the first tiny hearts we ate
on a dare for their poison?
No ripe boys roll cigars from weeds
No queens of the May
sit splay-legged, threading clover
stem upon stem for the longest chain.
In your sad sod dandelions remain extinct,
their little parachutes never blown
by children with grass prints on their knees
into the wild green yonder
till our mothers’ voices call us in
across the patchwork giving up its light.


First published in The Appalachian Journal.
Used here with the author's permission.

Learn more about Janice here.