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.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
