December was a grassless month
Thus mā added grass to her name
because goats needed forage to live through
the long winter and mā was in labor
when the days were short and darkened
swiftly
It was the year of the goat, 2003.
That summer’s grass sun-dried,
preserved in a prayer
spoken as she was called to dinner as child
May you have grass. Have you
your grass.
The character 韦
first seen during the 商 Dynasty
which came after the 夏 , or summer,
pictureda city
protected, or surrounded
: to defend, or disobey,
or tanned animal skins,
turned into bridle
With the addition of two leaves
of grass, 苇
referred to reed,
which was not only grass,
but grass that grew tall in an abundance of water
and remember that December
was a dry month.
What about the city then?
Probably because its defenders
were men of great stature
and the inventor of 字
had paddled a boat down a marsh lined
with reed and thought
“Great grass!”
or, for it was night,
mistaken the grass for very thin soldiers
defending the wetland.
Or a poet, encountering
a moment of the unsayable,
an aching love for the grass,
or burning wrath, depending
on whether the city was being protected
or under siege,
or perhaps each was the other’s predicate
that is to say, they were one thing—
this grass, and this goat,
and this winter—
when this water
locked up in snow
and this thought of it fell
on mā’s parched tongue.
—
Lydia T. Liu is a diasporic poet and scholar, whose writing has appeared in Bellingham Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Frogpond ,and Columbia Review. Her work received support from the Community of Writers and was recognized as a finalist in the Poetry Society of America Chapbook contest. She grew up in Singapore and lives in New York.