Winter 1999

[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED MARCH 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: WINTER 1999.]

On Improving the Property

By May Theilgaard Watts

They laid the trilliums low,
and where drifted anemones and wild sweet phlox
were wont to follow April's hepaticas — they planted grass.

There was a corner that held a tangled copse
of hawthorn and young wild crabs,
bridal in May above yellow violets,
purple-twigged in November.
They needed the place for Lombardy poplars — and grass.

Last June the elderberry was fragrant here,
and in October the viburnum poured its wine
beneath the moon-yellow wisps of the witch-hazel blossoms.
They piled them in the alley and made a burnt offering — to grass.

There was a slope that a wild grapevine had captured long ago.
At its brink a colony of mandrakes held green umbrellas close,
like a crowd along the path of a parade.
This job almost baffled them: showers washed off the seed
and made gullies in the naked clay.
They gritted their teeth — and planted grass.

At the base of the slope there was a hollow
so lush with hundreds of years of fallen leaves
that maiden-hair swirled above the trout-lilies,
and even a few blood-roots lifted frosty blossoms there.
Clay from the ravaged slope washed down
and filled the hollow with a yellow hump.
They noticed the hump — and planted grass.

There was a linden that the bees loved.
A smug catalpa has taken its place,
but the wood ashes were used to fertilize the grass.

People pass by and say: "Just look at that grass —
not a weed in it. It's like velvet!"
(One could say as much for any other grave.)