Poem 32

I'm currently house sitting in West Seattle and for the first time in a long while, I have to worry about a lawn. My anxiety about the grass rose recently with the temperature, and yet I love going out in the evening with the hose and spraying down the small yard. It's a wasteful use of water, grass, but there's something about a lawn that I can't get over.

Watering the Grass

Like I wish I could write,
the water from the guts
of the house
reliably spouts from the metal
end of the hose.
With my thumb over the tip,
shaping the fan
of spray just right
I gallop the water over the moaning
parts of the yard.
In this way we battle the sun.
As it moves on to blast
another hemisphere,
we sneak out of houses
in sandals, some of us
without shirts,
to revive green comrades
in lawn and bed,
each of us more nurse
than soldier,
and yet isn’t that what we all become?
Soothing grass with
clear balm
as if each drop were a kind word.