Leaves of Grass Redux

Joshua Dickinson

A real look under your boot soles moment
First grass cutting of the campus semester
Smell of life in death, summer’s fall.

Walking the campus past still symbol clock you stopped me again, grandfather,
Another grass lane you turned, backed, returned
Consummate mower
Scything blades from underneath the soil
These two days since we planted the reminders of you
Trees at the courthouse, hope in shade.

An onioning of tears suggested to me
And I slow                    slow                 stop
Stumble forward so as not to appear mental.
But that’s what I am.
Not crazy like that time biking past some bearded old
Man mowing, thinking it was you I crashed in a ditch
Arrested by an image of something worth the reincarnating,
some doppelgänger you,
But warped enough to consider stricken.

Practical as your generation was, I’m left thinking of you in terms of
Cut price per acre and
Memory accounting per month
Till claws in the blood
Release
Unpinioned, breath returns,
Tears prised.
And, one-fourth you, this dim offshoot self walks onward.