The High Moor, Cotton Grass and a Lowland Weed

(Photo: A Chorus of Cotton Grass, High Country Moor, the Alps. (click on photo for close-up)

Crabgrass

4 or 5 digits -- the splayed fingers
of an outstretched hand,

driven to the peripherique of tightly
cropped, well-fed urban meadows...

How the violets and yellow flowers
of spring wish to return, showing us

that someone has given up all the fighting,
and let their hair go wild again, gestures

shaped, even if ever so slightly,
by much sun, sparse rain, and the curious

lithe ways of a fickle wind.

Why Crabgrass? a noisome plant at best. Embedded deep within the worldview
of North American culture is the concept, lawn. One could say, that, if the rich texture
of interwoven plant communities which is a high country moor, one which is entirely
self-sustaining and self-organizing, compares to an acoustic symphony of muted strings,
then the monotonous well-kept carpet of the suburban lawn is like a machine which
grinds out but a single note to the exclusion of all the other natural sounds around it.

If this is true, then one might question, why do we find the lawn so sacrosanct, so
beautiful?

| see also Songs of Love and Loss: Part I ; Part II |

| go to Picture/Poems: Central Display | go to PicturePage: Week IV | and Week V (5) Departure Tree |