The Grass

Bouteloua black

grama grass red

chino side-

oats blue grama grass

hairy buffalo-

grass toboso three-awn

land’s dawn 旦 sun

over sand, tumble

wind-

mill witch- cup- saltgrass

plains love- indiangrass, prairie

cordgrass, pink pappusgrass, sprangle-

top green knotroot

bristle, bluestem, tangle-

head, sacaton

panicles

open, golden drop-

seed blooms desert winter-

grass, awns twist, un-

twist, such

syllables flicker

out of grass

: Nanissáanah

thirst, ghost dance

native

spirits, active

roots, footstalks

to soil as to site, stems

bend, range-

lands wave, seiche

fields sway, clouds

pass over-

grazed grass

staked, fenced

dries, weakens, dies,

fallen

crowns, the grasslands

what

comes to pass, ranch-

hand lands, live-

stock livelihood

wildlife gone, displaced, migrations

impeded, scales im-

balanced

the years

spread, each itself

hitched to everything else

in the universe

nodes

hollowed, drought-

land years, drops

on the hardpan

nature

is endless

regeneration

trichloris, muhly, switch-

grass, wind misses

沙 沙 shasha through the pass-

es, whispering seeds

will pass, will pass

within leaves

listening

grasses, not only

the revelation

to sustain it, over-

land grasses seeds

spread and grow, rhizome,

stolon to sod, curly

mesquite cotton-

top, draft

to draft 草

ten thousand

grasses, 草 dancing

culms 草 of grass

florescence, sheaths

and blades whorl

flower to

flower, wild

grass, knowing

wind strips, slips

of time, the leaves

words weave, un-

weave the

grass