Overture
BY BRUCE SNIDER
Before everything, there was the banjo, the grass
of its strings like no other story of grass.
Our father sang: May the Circle Be Unbroken.
He sang a vast blue belonging called the grass.
I heard it in soybean fields, sheep, falling apples.
I heard it in my brother, who heard it in the grass.
As teenagers, we spat cherry pits.
Talking and laughing, we rolled grass.
To be a sin, said our mother, was to think one.
To be a good son: cut the grass.
Don’t tell me what the Good Book says.
Tell me about the snake in the grass.
Faith: the white plate set before us.
Faith: the pet rabbit our mother skinned in the grass.
If Redneck was our country—
its anthem was cricket song, its flag: the browning grass.
What should I call my broken heart—a.) my lover
b.) my brother c.) what’s buried beneath the grass?
My brother read Guns and Ammo. True,
or false? I read Leaves of Grass.
And the rain repeats: (grass) (grass) (grass)
(grass) (grass) (grass) (grass) (grass) (grass)
When Virgil said: I sing of warfare and a man
at war, he was speaking of the grass;
when Haggard said: I been a workin’ man,
he was also speaking of the grass.
In the prison yard: April prayer and more bitter church coffee.
Spring is a joke. It’s punchline: grass.
Yes, so many feelings, Bruce! Cut or uncut,
watch them grow: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
