grass clippings like tea leaves

grass clippings like tea leaves

Today, I'm reading the future

from yesterday

laid out in sun-blanched clumps

where mower blades have battled

these less than civil blades and won.

This neat appearance almost argues

design as giver rather than taker,

but fastidious reason

is no creator, it offers mere pruning;

the mower has cut things short

for a season

and this grass will never come to head,

produce seed.

Above us, the Bookcliffs slice late morning,

shadow bleeding into this valley;

my students sprawl upon the

soccer field with journals

and seedling ideas riding the sharp tips of their

burrowing pens.

We hear the mower still at work.

Who can say,

No more—

Growth stops here?

Only the tiniest ant

working deep among

the hidden roots is safe

from the whirring

of the blades,

but, for these twenty minutes,

this young sun,

these credulous pens,

tilling naive pages, we are all

taller.