This week’s poem brings us an appreciation of a humble hedge, by Carl Little. I love the casual intimacy of this poem’s imagery and the subtlety with which it situates the hedge amidst human lives.

A native New Yorker, Little has lived on Mount Desert Island since 1989. In addition to numerous art books, Little is the author of “Ocean Drinker: New & Selected Poems” (Deerbrook Editions). His poems have appeared in many journals, including The Paris Review, LOCUSPOINT, Down East and Off the Coast, and in several anthologies edited by Wesley McNair.

Little recently received the lifetime achievement award, and a $50,000 prize, from the Portland-based Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, which recognizes writers “who make art accessible to general audiences.” He is communications manager at the Maine Community Foundation.

 

Hedge

By Carl Little

 

“This is called a hedge,” I tell James,

pointing to a line of green edging a yard

in Charlottesville. I don’t tell him

 

I see Fred Grimshaw on a ladder

trimming the tops and sides,

clippers making that special clatter,

 

and the pungent smell of cuttings

as I follow his progress with rake

and wheelbarrow, the world

 

a blessed ordered place then,

nothing fancy like topiary

rabbits or elk, just this border

 

between us and the busy road,

a mass dense and broad and deep

into which we peer to find

 

bird’s nest or missing frisbee,

bits of sunlight among tangle,

a verge my grandson caresses

 

scooting past, noticing and not.

 

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “Hedge,” copyright © 2021 by Carl Little, appears by permission of the author.

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