Thousands of Americans fret over the appearance of
their lawns, spraying, aerating, grooming, but here Grace Bauer finds good
reasons to resist the impulse to tame what’s wild: the white of
clover blossoms under a streetlight, the possibility of finding the hidden,
lucky, four-leafed rarity.
Against Lawn
The midnight streetlight illuminating the white of clover assures me
I am right not to manicure my patch of grass into a dull
carpet of uniform green, but to allow whatever will to take over.
Somewhere in that lace lies luck, though I may never swoop down
to find it. Three, too, is an auspicious number. And this seeing
a reminder to avoid too much taming of what, even here, wants to be wild.
Reprinted from the literary journal, Lake Effect, Volume 8, Spring
2004 by permission of the author. Copyright © 2004 by Grace Bauer,
whose new book, Beholding Eye, is forthcoming from Wordtech Communications in 2006. This
weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of
Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska,
Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
This article appears in Mar 23-29, 2006.
