Silent Grass

In The Glass Harp (by Truman Capote), Dolly Talbo takes her young ward into the woods to gather roots. Her favorite place is a hill and "Below the hill grows a field of high Indian grass that changes color with the seasons: go to see it in the fall, late September, when it has gone red as sunset, when the scarlet shadows like firelight breeze over it and the autumn winds strum on its dry leaves sighing human music, a harp of voices."

She asks him, "Do you hear? that is the grass harp, always telling a story—it knows the stories of all the people on the hill, of all the people who ever lived, and when we are dead it will tell ours, too."

The Indian grass may tell the stories of Dolly's town, but I live where the grass gets cut once, if not twice, a week. It will never grow tall enough to tell stories about anyone. So if my stories are to be told, I will have to tell them myself. No grass harp for me, it's cyberspace!