Thin Grass

***

THIN GRASS

Thin grass, in a stingy icing of soil,
covers rocks and clay.
Crops raise little but hopes deferred.
Yet somehow, with good rains
more clover comes,
the weeds survive,
green enough to keep alive
all who call these hilly pastures home.

Wild turkeys, rabbits, raccoon, and deer,
even coyotes can multiply here.
One quite contented bull, with his twelve old cows
and their nursing calves,
moles enough to undermine a cemetery,
and more little climbing,
..crawling, swimming,
….buzzing, jumping,
……flying things than I can list
know this farm as home.

It’s awe-ful pretty—this land.
No houses spoil the view
or break the greening contours
hiding sinkholes and caves in the karst,
hollows, beneath the valley breasts,
drop-offs beyond the brows of hills.

Can I root in shallow soil on stone or clay?
or will I decide it’s safer in the air—
and try to fly from this land
where sudden holes and washouts hide,
where Johnson grass shoots twelve feet high,
songbirds find thistles,
and raptors soar and dive
for more than enough snakes and rodents,
enough for them to thrive.

Or might I make a garden here,
Open a gate for God?
Start a compost pile,
Build up the humus,
Make a soul to stand on,
Leave a legacy of sod?

*In karst topography, water dissolves the underlying layers of sedimentary rock;
the surface can be insecure. It is easily eroded and is filled with sinkholes, springs, caves
and tunnels. After pulling a couple big tractors out of new hidden holes and washouts,
my husband had a friend in a beat-up old farm Hummer go ahead of him and check the
ground for safety each spring, when he ventured out to bush hog for the first time.