Grass Poem by gershon hepner

The grass isn’t waiting
for someone to mow it,
and fresh carbon dating
is helpless to slow it.
The lawns are not watered
and feel they’re let down,
and all blades are slaughtered
when green grass turns brown.
Fast as the pace
of the summer grass, dying,
must forfeit its face
and give up without trying,
with hopes of returning
next year, when the mowing
will justify yearning
for grass that is growing.



Inspired by Philip Larkin’s “Cut Grass”
Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death

It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,

White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.