Nothing older than grieving.
Not love nor the lurch of leaving
the ground for the first time. (You
remember someone tossing you
into the air.) This is older
even than that. (You land, colder
from your small fall through space, the sigh
of the air still clinging to your ear.) You lie
where you fell on the brown grass. Why
you, why grass? Why not name
everything that's going to die with the same
this, this—a neutral tissue, a moss. Pressed,
each syllable ravels into mist, its weight unguessed
and wet on the blades of your tongue. (For-
lorn, you are grass, soft as what you mourn for.)
[Claire Wahmanholm, ‘Primer’, from Meltwater: Poems]
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