After Whitman

I abhor the grass, the leaves that turn to blades
under the whetstone of heat, the worms, blind
and desperate and slippery, that wriggle forth
in the wet, the sucking of mud on bare feet…

We drive through Camarillo, past strawberry
and alfalfa fields, on another triple-digit day,
come upon a sod farm, expansive and endless
like the horizon at sea, bright green in a land
that hasn’t seen a drop of rain for months…

O America, do not your fields of grass—median strips,
those ill-tended patches behind gas stations and
strip clubs, the manicured, cruel, and curling
fingers of the South Lawn of the White House—
law waste to the idea that you are
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom,
Law and Love?…

And as you devour your once deep and replenishing wells,
what will become of your Bougainvillea, your Oaks:
the flowers that adorn your heroic graves, and your people
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs?