Howard Moss’s story, “Afternoons in New England,” appeared in NER 1.2 (1978):
Up the hill near the graveyard, a boy is cutting down the tall grass. In the quiet of the afternoon, I can hear the sound his blade makes as it hacks through the stems. A small patch of vertical weeds has just fallen; throughout the day, the patch will become larger until he is boxed in by the surrounding grass, or until there is no grass at all.