Uncut Grass
We didn't cut the grass this year
and now we are lost at sea.
We guess at the form of the wind
from the bellying of green.
I drop anchor where my daughter
tugs at stems and sneezes.
We learn flowers,
wave upon wave,
dandelion and lady's smock -
yellow and violet on a spring day,
clover in summer
and when we think them ended,
hawkbit like another dandelion
runs to the sky.
At night the hawkbit closes
and I perform Tai Chi
with the grass tugging my ankles,
wetting my socks under a Summer moon.
At dawn it opens
in brotherly colour to meet the sun.
When the sun shines we hang out washing to dry.
Bed clothes flap blankly
and shirts and trousers
dance like other selves
on adventurous swell.
I live with sail cloth
as it bounces and billows
to tug itself free.
Tide after tide of changes
as months go by.
Seedlings of ash and sycamore
are poised to take over,
stretch darkness above our heads.
Must I reach for my blade,
be farmer not sailor,
store hay year after year?
Colin
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