My grass is growing and my feet shall not feel it

I had a garden …

The grass is growing. My grass.
My green grass is growing and
my feet shall not feel it when it is

dew-cold to be felt on the soles
of my feet with the sun, as only
early morning birdsong sung

can be felt with the soul, smelled
with the soil and the dew on the grass,
on my grass where my feet shall not

press their soles in belonging to the
ground, to my ground. Growing
in another spring under a sun

that still warms, where birds sing,
and where I am now forbidden, with
memories of grass, of dew, and that

sense of being as the grass, as the
ground with its cool earthy heart,
as the birds, of belonging to sky.

I had a garden, and the grass I mowed,
weeded, nurtured, sprawled upon,
no longer knows my morning feet

or how I needed it for more than
the tickle between my toes or the
sense of nature for an urban child.

The grass is growing now. I do not lie
to gaze at birds against the sun and
feel both free and grounded, or rise

because in fact it is hard and bumpy and
as uncomfortable as it is real. Instead
my wide window gathers sun, far above

a small lake, with fish, with trees and
with grass that I and a hundred dwellers
should not walk on, or feel the dew.

Gulls circle, willows weave the wind,
the water stirs with fins and a postman
draws the path. The unfelt grass is growing.