Tall Grass
1.
Small boy
Seven or eight
Hair so white blond
A blue jay will chase him from the barn
Strafing his head, hoping for hair
For a nest, presumably.
2.
Lessons
In the countryside:
A toy rifle with a scope,
A fresh gift.
Small toad
Caught, thoughtlessly dropped in the scope
And wedged, hopelessly, in the scope’s pinched middle.
Helplessly, trying to unwedge the toad
Without maiming it or killing it,
Unable to do so,
Small boy
Throws his gift, and the toad still alive, still wedged,
In the now sightless scope,
Into the tall grass down the hill from the fence.
3.
Later,
Small boy
Looks for his kitten,
Missing for several days;
And is led by his nose,
Trailing mounting fear,
To a dark spot beneath a workbench
In an outbuilding.
There
Small cat
Is found, rotting, its head
Somehow gotten into but unable to get out of
A mason jar, rolled from among canning supplies,
Underneath the bench.
Unable to bear
The thought of the cat’s death, not to mention its final moments,
Small boy
Throws partially jarred carcass
Into the tall grass down the hill from the fence.
4.
Big boy,
I wonder now about
That tall grass
Down the hill
From the fence,
That tall grass,
About whether it still hides
The guilt-edged horrors of my childhood:
Toy guns and toads, mason jars and kittens,
Knowledge of fate and death.
There is a hush now while the hills rise up
and God is going to sleep. He trusts the ship
of Heaven to take over and proceed beautifully
as he lies dreaming in the lap of the world.
He knows the owls will guard the sweetness
of the soul in their massive keep of silence,
looking out with eyes open or closed over
the length of Tomales Bay that the egrets
conform to, whitely broad in flight, white
and slim in standing. God, who thinks about
poetry all the time, breathes happily as He
repeats to Himself: there are fish in the net,
lots of fish this time in the net of the heart.
“Fishing in the Keep of Silence” by Linda Gregg
Beautiful. Thanks!