I can pull up a handful of grass
still green​ ​and know it will come back
with an essential sense of what
it was and is.​ ​I just want to know how
to lie down​, ​to know my life is writ-
ten across a grass seed​, ​in the profile

of a grass blade.​ ​In the body of a per-
son:​ ​a color for grass which gets lost,
a word for green that only I can see, a hornet
flying in elliptical orbits. Imagine a yard
where the grass is blue in the moonlight​. ​I-

magine what green is to the dead​. ​Imagine if
that was the one thing always preserved
from every person who ever lived— at least
one thing could be a thread.

A poem by Alexander Scalfano.


Photo used under CC.