Violeta Garcia-Mendoza

Ode to Unmown Grass

There’s some misfit in me that loves
an overlong and ill-advised nostalgia,
gone to seed like summer lawn.

How many afternoons I’ve idled, whiled
away watching our unkempt kingdom
like some daydreaming god. 

If clovered, dandelioned, all the better.
Let the breeze and bees and rabbits 
come. Let there be meadow. 

Rest, love; what might be so delicious 
as this blink of wild? Negligence 

barely distinct but for this fescue— 
weight-bent and flower-bowed.

Fall Walk in Which Not Everything is Terrible

Some small survival guide for the swiftly 
tilting light: today, how the heat-burnt grass 
takes on a shade of spent splendor, & the wild

mustard sways goldenrod, & the sparrows 
feast over spilled muffin crumbs, & just one 
turkey vulture soars backlit by the sun. 

God, I know this poem is too sentimental, but if 
we could volume knob panic, let this day 
dial that doom down. Cat’s cradle: how we walk on 

under layers of power lines, contrails, 
the concrete beneath us a starburst of cracks— 
everything, after all, breakable. Yes, 

some days fail better than others; see how
the oaks drop their acorns into the coming 
dark, how a neighbor chalks a joke into

the sidewalk, a sign reads slow down, & down
the street, roofers are shingling, singing
along to reggaeton, all morning—music,

like it does, carrying & I can’t help 
but want this for us—forever—this life.

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