An Intimate Moment with Nature

What lies underneath tuffs of grass?
Is the dirt compact, do ants build
their homes on level ground?
I grasp at the grass, strands caught between
my fingers like a lover’s hair
as soft and chunky as curls.
The earth roils with life,
hills and valleys traversed by near invisible insects,
scurrying as their forests part at a pair of intrusive hands.
I keep prying, trying to peer at roots
but they go further than I expected.
To tug at a blade of grass means to disrupt
a whole culture of plant lives.
On the precipice of turning from lover to monster,
aware how easy it would be to rip the hair out
and study it’s bulbous ends–
I stop, prop the grass back to its natural
part and walk away,
choosing instead to keep nature’s secret
rather than claim it for my own.

Gardening Is a Violent Chore

Torrents of water, tearing the grass,
you brutalize the dirt
and hack their outreached leaves.
The plans are well researched
fragmented for brutal success.
Even watering is a crime,
Showering bees and moths, adhering wings
catapulting them to deaths
stamped by boots and stalks.
We prioritize and prop annual plants
over the gracious natives already rooted
dancing with butterflies and bees,
moths and ants in reciprocal motion.
We dominate the earth in hopes
to create our own heaven
from the pieces we kidnap and mangle
from barren hell-scape to sculpted greenhouse.
Does this forced order survive our plans?
Or will we leave a trail of ruined trunks,
allowing the weeds to take over for us?