Patches of Grass
Like small islands yellow green patches of grass started to appear out on our lawn. There were still some giant snow banks frozen hard and very dirty looking near the edges of the driveway, but out in the center of the lawn spring was trying to poke its head out. That early April day in 1970 I was trying to jump from one grassy island to the next without touching the snow. I imagined that the snow was a volcanic lava flow and if it touched my boots it would just burn them up.
The full of the sun of that day felt good on my face and I could almost watch the snow disappear. The uncovered ground was spongy and wet and when I lifted my boot I could see water gather in my tracks as if I sucked it back up out of the ground. Placing my hand on the ground it felt cool almost cold and the grass seemed to be matted and asleep.
I watched as small birds flitted from one open grassy area to the next just as I was doing. They were picking away at something I could not see with there small beaks. Every movement they made was like a mechanical hop as if they were made of robot parts. Observing their movements I tried my best to replicate a bird hop and the head movement. I could now hear the wet ground under my boots and the sucking sound of the water.
My movements made most of the little birds just fly away and roost in a birch tree nearby. I searched on my knees pretty close to the ground with my face for anything they might be picking up in the bare spots but there was nothing I could find. The moist ground was now seeping through my toughskin jeans felt to cold to stay on the ground so I decided to try to stomp out the rest of the snow on the lawn so they could have more open lawn to pick away in.
While stomping the crisp snow it broke up into thin erratic flat shapes that were great to pick up and fling like a Frisbee into the road. Each one I tossed wobbled through the air and crashed on the pavement into millions of bits. This was cool and I spent over an hour whizzing shards of snow out onto the road until my shoulder started to burn and my hands were raw. The road was covered with snow chunks and with the full sun most were now melting so fast that the first few I tossed were nothing but dark wet spots.
I could smell the sap in the many spruce trees coming back to life and I liked the lawn I couldn’t wait for all of it to be uncovered but I was to tired to get rid of the rest. I just hopped the lava spots back to the porch where I waited for all the little birds to come back to the open ground. I yelled back to them “ see!.. now ya got more lawn”.
