Diluvian Dream by Wilmer Mills

All afternoon I walk behind the mower,

Imagining, though paradoxically,

That even though the grass is getting lower,

What I have cut is like a rising sea;

The parts I haven’t cut, with every pass,

Resemble real geography, a map,

A shrinking island continent of grass

Where shoreline vanishes with every lap.

At last, the noise and smell of gasoline

Dispel my dream. What sea? Peninsulas?

They were the lands my inner child had seen,

Their little Yucatáns and Floridas.

But when I’m finished, and Yard goes back to Lawn,

I can’t help thinking that a world is gone.

This a standard Sonnet with little alterations to the rhyme scheme or stanza length. I was drawn into this sonnet by the title and found that I was not at all disappointed by what I found. I decided to write on this sonnet because I believe that anyone who has ever mowed a lawn can understand precisely what the poet is saying about the uncut grass being an island with a disappearing shoreline. It is not a serious sonnet with any profound meaning, but it is fun and relatable: it is the realization of a thought all of us have but are never able to vocalize. I think the imaginary islands the poet sees in the grass he is cutting are also representative of a childhood innocence and sense of wonder. He seems to question how he would have seen these things and admits they were seen by his inner child. When Mills states, "A world is gone" he is referring to his imaginary landscape as well as the world of his childhood and imagination.