poems for today - Families / September (Paley)
Families
The sheep families are out in the meadow
Caddy and her two big lambs Gruff and Veronica
Veronica raises her curly head then bends to the grass
Usefully she shits green grass and wool is her work
Gruff is going away he will become something else
Father of generations? What? more likely meat that
is a male in war or pasture his work is meat
September
Then the flowers became very wild
because it was early September
and they had nothing to lose
they tossed their colors every
which way over the garden wall
splattering the lawn shoving their
wild orange red rain-disheveld faces
into my window without shame
"Families" and "September"
by Grace Paley
from Begin Again: Collected Poems
©2000 by Grace Paley