Today's poem is by Lisa M. Hase-Jackson

Yield
       

Stonehenge is maintained with a push mower—
the groundskeeper marching back and forth
in crosshatch strips cutting the grass short, even
like a haircut, like a golf course. This is not

how it looks after my husband passes the Phillips-Norelco
through hair left on my mother's pale scalp, a good ½ inch
that the stylist just could not bring herself to shave.

Fluffs of charcoal dust the deck planks while silent
birds watch. The walnut tree sheds, too, dropping leaves
in early June. For ten years we assumed this a harbinger

of the tree's demise, but time has proven that it does this
every season.

Copyright © 2025 Lisa M. Hase-Jackson All rights reserved
from Insomnia in Another Town
Clemson University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission