Winter Rye

Only these few days in its life will this baby grass be this peculiar shade of green. Pretend I didn’t plant it. Pretend its seeds blew in from another planet. All it knows so far is autumn and the sprinkler. For all it knows, it has landed somewhere perfect for a grass’s life—say, an Ireland planet, or a planet wholly rainforest—and every day will be like this. Snow will never fall. No ice, no drought. And a giant pink primate will tiptoe up to water it twice daily forever. But it will only be this green right now, just these few days. Not again, not later when those things turn out to be untrue.