Christine Taylor

Backyard Pastoral

Last weekend, I only mowed half the lawn in the backyard because of course when I have time, the mower doesn’t want to start and cranked up just 15 minutes before I needed to leave for the dentist. Now, patches of grass sprout from the lawn in wild circular sprawls. When this was his house, my father mowed the lawn every weekend, trimmed the edges neatly at the base of the fence. Family gossip has it that one year early on, he tore up the entire yard, packed his car with Kentucky bluegrass, laid the sod himself. There were never weeds. Blades of grass, as sharp now as then, are cool on my feet. I would cut the grass today, but I’m set up in a lawn chair marking essays.

bees dance
clover to clover
birdsong