Jesus said Will someone

tell me, please, what this
pink grass is called? I see it
in a field east of 116 as I’m driving south, 

also behind an old cemetery in Deerfield,
and in other waste places. 

It hovers about seven inches, 
rosy (color of wisdom) in late summer, then 
when, in fall, dew or frost sends sparks 

running in and out, it’s like unto
gold tried in the furnace. 

Jesus said, I may have said this before, but
consider the grass. How famous it is
for what it is. Nutritious. Useful, twisted 

into ropes, woven as cloth or burned
as smudge over your 

sometimes sick body.
So many characters the grass seems to be,
getting up from the fields 

in the morning, companions
of the dew. 

(Fleeing the deep grasses of the hunting ground,
Sokaku wrote, I heard the stag cry
—my friend is lost—) 

Switch grass, blue grass, crab
grass, knot, quaking, Leaves of: 

You used to go into the juice shop on 23rd Street 
and you drank that wheatgrass as though
it could save you from the cry of a lonesome retrovirus. 

And you did live, till now, lived to write that.
So many stories, as many as all beings. That’s how many 

fall in front of the mower, 
companions of the fire, come evening. 

Patrick Donnelly | Jesus said There’s a story
Contents | Mudlark No. 61 (2016)