So I’m lying on the lawn, the Great Ma
over in the laundry room, apron pockets full
of clothespins, Kleenex, and flakes of skin.

“Quit rubbing,” the Great Pa would say.
“Quit rubbing,” we learned to say.
I put my eye down up against a blade of grass—

why, I wondered, did she rub
& not just quit it like the Great Pa said?—
each blade has a fold, each fold

a shadow, inside each shadow, a spindle
of gold: saw, and never told.
“You’ll rub ’em,” he’d say, “to the bone.

I’m calling Dr. Rosenbaum.”
“I’ll be in the laundry room,” she’d said
to me. “Wait here.” And so I did

and so I have, And can report: here 
is a lawn made largely of her, grief
a blade made largely of light. “To the bone,”

I say to my blade, “to the bone.”