On my knees I am pulling
long grasses—ripping out the roots
of weeds, what goes to seed,

the rampages of thoughts
blooming, feathery clouds
among the irises and bees.

I am yanking the grasses that make
my city yard wild.
Time was, any uncut patch

of lawn lush or dying
looked like the country—a field
I cut across, pausing

halfway, pretending
down to the clover
a pasture and the horse.

The wind whickered, and I asked
again for an acre or so—
a little wild

place to walk, to stop and sit.
I have been smitten
with Boboli and Versailles,

their vistas and parterres,
immaculate angles and rounds
we wandered, but I lost the book

where I sketched those beds.
Here in the middle
of my middle age, I desire

meadow under my feet,
orchard through my window—and if
my body is the garden

I’ve let go to seed,
may I tend it so gently
that spaces open up

for watching the weather,
for sunrise, snow, and finches—yes,
for a brook, the grasses climbing

tall in all their varieties,
and in there we could dwell
not needing the names of things.