The Lawn Grass Elf

It was during my Walkman summer I learned my lesson not to walk home late To my low-rent street While immersed in a violin concerto… Suddenly two punks pulled a knife and gave me A pretty heavy frisson of mortality. After that I saved my Walkman For walking near the park of Roses. The landscaped and trellised yards With rock-edged beds of flowers Breathed to me the secret wishes of each family. That was the summer I saw the lawn-grass elf. It appeared in my mind's eye, an adolescent wearing a crew-cut, Pug-nosed, Its hair was a shade of green Somewhere between khaki and chlorophyll, It had a cajoling voice, as if seeking a playmate. In its voice I heard the snarl of lawn mowers in the afternoon Mixed with whoosh of training jets overhead. Its smooth skin was dotted with impetigo, which it kept scratching. I got a sense of nastiness, a petulant temper, But over the lawn-grass elf were two maple trees; They were singing softly with their leaves. Those maple nursemaids might soften the boy, if there were time. The summer after that, I saw the cornfield elf. That was after some sad family troubles Made me stumble in graduate school. A desperate fantasy got lodged in my head: I would disappear from Columbus, I would build myself a lean-to right next to a cornfield Somewhere off Evening Star Road. I would take three books—deep, classical books, To the rustling of leaves I would delve into those books. I don't know why my idyll was so lowly. Why didn't I fantasize a perch in the Rockies? I am a Stark County boy after all. But I never made it to that lean-to by the cornfield. I lived with a houseful of undergraduates; I did my best to finish out the year. My housemates cheered me up at beerhalls Where corn-fed frat boys ordered beer in buckets And trashed the place on football Saturdays. One weekend I drove up North to see my Dad. I pulled off the road in Holmes County And skirted a cornfield beside a woodlot; That's when I saw the cornfield elf. He was bigger than an elf, more like a Viking With a barrel chest, a paunch, and golden beard From which beer was dribbling endlessly. His features were hearty and welcoming, His hair gleamed around his face like a corolla, His hat was an arrangement of sheaths and tassels, But he had irradiated eyes. He had been sitting in a tractor Which was built with a closed-in cab In which he often watched TV. Because our encounter brought him to a sudden stop, His hands reached to his belt buckle. Patting himself to ease the painful borborygmus From the pesticide sloshing In the groundwater of his vitals. Two months later, on a walk with no destination I spotted a little elf in a vacant lot, barely a glimpse Where broken green bottles Lay among brambles near a scrubby ditch.