One Blade of Grass

"Oh! for a refreshing glimpse of one blade of grass–for a snuff at the fragrance of the loamy earth! Is there nothing fresh around us? Is there nothing green to be seen?" – Melville, from Typee











Day 1


City block, lodged here adjacent to more water than earth, along the man-cut river,
    which flows from lake to lake.
Here where the water had been impounded, shut-in, and the shores rose to disable
    the hundred old houses and sunk beaches.
Even in winter I walk along the very dry shores of the sidewalks, chalky now by cold,
    but not by snow yet
And wonder if these lines of houses are not but a stationary ships' windows overlooking
    these cold and separated lives
In which each holds the paraphanalia of a life without the growth of beautiful green:
    the white dog lying along register
A kitchen stocked by one-day old oranges, cords like thin white snakes at every surface,
    stairs and bathrooms erect
Bound to these strange and chained permanence, landlocked, still, as that part of the sea
    you pass forever without wind;
I want the foundations to lift up and heave, if comfortably, set off to a Polynesia,
    find a woman there, a blade of grass, relief.