Autumn Grass

my face is grass...

Maurice Kenny, from Legacy

...the fresh green grass emerging
through last year’s dead.

Rachel McKay

Maurice Kenny’s poem, Legacy, I loved long before having a personal relationship with a natural place. It was a poem of prescience. “my thoughts are winds which blow... my word, my word, loaned legacy...”

Rachel’s words, written in a blog comment, got me out the door right away though. One a relationship’s begun, it’s easy to build upon it.

At this time of year, I hadn’t been expecting grass. New grass equals spring in my mind. Had it not been for Rachel’s words, I’d have seen new shoots on the paths, sure, I would have, but not in November. If not for her words, if not for Rachel’s looking down at the earth, I’d have missed the grass’s determination, the undeniable burst of green there at my feet. There’s the legacy of grass sprouting at my feet.