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.

A Teaspoonful of Happiness

Imagine: your life's work in a teaspoon! Every now and then, we need a little smack in the face to stop our whining and complaining and realize how blessed we humans are. This poem did that for me, as Jeanie points out that the sum total of a honeybee's life is six weeks and all he has to show for those six weeks of frantic productivity is a single spoonful of honey. I haven't checked this fact for scientific accuracy--I'm guessing she did--but teaspoon or tablespoon (or half a cup, for that matter!), the message of this poem stopped me in my tracks.

2010 Poetry Parade: Day 25

Sweetness
by
Jeanie Tomasko

God gave the honeybee six weeks
and so
she flies
five hundred miles
in short refrains
of alleluias
to windy, white clover fields
to pink and proper rose gardens
gathering nectar in that careful needle
taking no time for self-pity, though
her life’s work, together
with that of eleven sisters
was the teaspoon of honey
I just stirred into my tea.

Sometimes she stops to walk
on my sunflowers,
her sturdy legs grow heavy
as she fills her pollen-baskets
with food for the bees back home,
but I like to think her stroll
on those upturned yellow faces,
is more for the joy of making me wonder
what I know of happiness.

This poem first appeared in the Wisconsin Poets' Calendar.
Used here with the author's permission.

Learn more about this poet here.