Backwards Through Wet Grass Backwards Through Wet Grass
For Anthony Hecht
This Jersey fall, the unrelenting rain has turned the front yards wild, their long, green hair to otters’ root-slick pelts. Today, again I step out into gray, breathe loamy air and catch a scent of home, a British field I camped in once - a weekend trip to study frogs. By day we kept our bodies sealed in waterproofs, our feet twice-socked in muddy boots. At night we hid in tents, played games of “Crazy Eights” beneath the pitter-pat of rain, now drumming our roll call of names, now scrabbling on the canvas like a rat. We were fourteen – all hormones – huddled damp and close, a nest of rabbits, screened from sight by tent flaps, while our teachers’ hipflask camp was pitched a hundred yards away. One night, alone with me, Rob Murphy raised his hand and touched my cheek. I shivered like a doe for her first buck. He twined a loosened strand of my dark hair around his thumb. I know I twisted with it. He removed my glasses - no one had ever done that - and he said that I was pretty. Afterwards, in classes I would stare at the back of his blond head and dream of nameless acts. He nearly kissed me, but our friends returned. The moment drained away like runnels in the evening mist, and came to nothing. Here, now it has rained so much, that field, that clumsy, gentle boy come back to me, and I remember this: the thrumming rain, the unexpected joy I knew at fourteen, for his almost-kiss.
Won Writer’s Digest Best Rhyming Poem 2005
Published in the Winners’ Anthology