The Hissing of Knoxville Lawns

Off Broadway, north of the city, I carry
jugs to my assigned neighborhood tree,
the wine-colored chokeberry. Hobbled
in 93 degrees, I breathe in the cool sewer,
its rush to First Creek, then the Forks

coil to form the Tennessee. I left my mother’s
people in the Nashville Basin for Knoxville
at eleven, straddled the Plateau, surged
like the muddy Cumberland to get here
and root. I wait till dusk to water

my own trees — redbud, dogwood,
paperbark maple — uncoil the hose
like Agee’s father on Highland Avenue,
a little bit mixed sort of block,
all the fathers out on their summer lawns,

collars removed and necks shy,
the bright bell of spray a call and response
to cicadas’ risen whine. Like my own father,
using the old name hose pipe, rinsing
the road off the Buick, home from traveling

the Southeast, his satchel and pamphlets
unpacked. We don’t think of these moments —
how I sat snug as the car warmed up,
as he scraped the winter ice, how the hose
rang in his hands those dusty days —

until we stand in that very spot
and open the spigot, until the arc
of water is pure rainbow, peach
to indigo, and we are carried back
and back to our selves undisguised.