… by and by, nor spare a sigh, though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie, and yet you will weep, and know why
—Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Spring and Fall, To a Young Child”
The whole time I ran the lawnmower
through brown cottonwood leaves,
I recited Gerard Manley Hopkins
and waded in intricate cross tied rhymes
that defied the straight green paths
I was making. I hope Gerard doesn’t think it rude
I call him by his first name when I talk to him,
as I often do when walking alone.
He never speaks back, but I’d like to think
I’m better at listening for him.
As today when I repeated again his words
about worlds of wanwood leafmeal,
I swear he rose up
in the dry-honey scent of leaf dust
as if to say, this, this, this.
And while I pushed the red Toro
across the leaf-spangled lawn,
I thrilled to know the world as poem,
to know the ambush of tears as tiny wet poems
to know myself as a tired and ecstatic poem
while all around me the leaves continued to fall.