All the days since the autumn equinox
I’ve been unable
to get the word
alas
out of my mind.
Alas
swirled on maple leaves
burnished by rain.
Alas—too pretty
to be sad though it signifies sadly.
Alas, the birds alight too briefly
before their southern leave.
Alas, the lawn,
monochrome emblem
of the love of money,
a single conforming species,
its rank’s blades held aloft,
poison-tipped
lethal, alas, to all
insects (except
the few pests targeted),
lethal to little helpers
and food progenitors.
Alas,
too many eradicate the dandelion
and the clover,
mistaking them for weeds.
I like my dandelion greens with lemon
and extra virgin olive oil,
capers for a treat.
I like to think the soil likes
the clover to fix its nitrogen
and the clover likes to be the grass
Walt Whitman loves, inviting us to loaf
and hum among wildflowers
whose names recall
daughters, home, and harvest—
flox, golden rod, and cosmos,
pincushion, Queen Anne’s lace,
sweet allysum, sweet violet, Autumn Joy—
where bees intoxicated by nectar, not toxins,
live to be our promiscuous pollinators.
Alas
