by Paul J. Willis
This is the season of sourgrass,
shy, lovely, beside the driveway.
Hanna gathers the stalks in her arms
like so many sheaves of daffodils
across her shoulder, green, gold.
I remember the alley behind
my grandmother’s house in Anaheim,
rifted with them along the fence.
One by one I crushed their stems
across my teeth, dripping the delight
of winter down my lips. A shudder,
an ache, in the roots of my tongue,
the approaching impossibility
of too much good in the world.