I lay down where the grass was tallest,
the ground warm through my shirt,
the smell of green rising sharp and sweet
as if the earth had just been opened.
Clover pressed my arms and neck -
cool, round, faintly damp,
its small white heads brushing skin
the way water does before you notice it’s there.
Bees moved low and busy,
their sound a soft stitching in the air.
One passed close enough
that I felt the wind of it.
The backs of my knees grew itchy with grass,
a good ache, the kind that asks nothing.
Sun pooled on my chest.
Sweat dried salty along my temples.
Somewhere a screen door slapped once
and then the sound lay down.
A hose hissed.
A robin lifted and dropped a single note
like a coin into silence.
I closed my eyes
not to sleep exactly
but to let the world keep going
without me for a while.
When I opened them again
the sky was still there,
blue and unremarkable and perfect.
Nothing had been decided.
This small corner -
where Boulevard meets Street -
held me the way a hand does,
without instruction.
Let the engines rush elsewhere.
Let the tall buildings practice their shadows.
Here there was only clover,
and breath,
and the rare relief
of having nowhere else to be.
GBS jr
2010
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