Twenty-Seven Years Deep

We planted bermuda one year.

Every day you pressed your face
to the earth
trying to spy some verdant body
breaking through.

“It’ll never grow,”
Crows and sparrows plucking hope
straight up from your labor.

The desert sun drying up
the mulch you laid
to give those tiny seeds a fighting chance.
Unseasonal heat stealing water from sprinklers
you spaced evenly
while the seed
thirsted.

Hope deferred makes the heart numb when
you’ve been longing for something green
and life-giving
to break through
year after
decade after
betrayal after
another dry year.

“Remember the grass?” I asked.

One year we laid down to wonder
at the stars together
when it seemed we were over,
and to chase the kids with water balloons
in the heat of summer.

I’m buried twenty-seven years and two sons deep
I’ll stop pressing you
unless
a seed falls to the ground
you have no power to produce.