Moving Through The Lawn
My feet are bricks. I move block-wise
through the lawn. The laughing children
across the street are not what I’m used to hearing.
The silence of grass is my only company.
I look into the green heart of the world, soft
beneath my toes, gentle as a baby lying
on a cotton sheet. The sounds of birds build
tension in my body, in some place I cannot reach,
that reads its story back to me unmetered
and intimate. The end of the checkered world
comes and goes. Flags fly in the distance
the way words are spoken, the way songs
are sung. All my thoughts emerge from their roost
as birds fill the yard too thick to understand.
A cat prowls, provoking my eyes to second
my latest guess, each gust of motion
after its kind.
Joel Fry lives in Athens, Alabama. More of his poetry may be read in online issues of Eclectica, Gravel, and Ghost Town.