Plant Study

It is time to denounce the weeds
and your proclivity to let them grow
so brightly, without rule, among you.
We must tame this eager carnage of
wild orange and magenta and green
that creeps like blood-watered sky
and bends most unnaturally from
disheveled stout rows—fragrant
bold canticles of untrimmed grace,
fighting for a chance to protrude
against us.

How can you pass and laugh as if nothing
has gone wrong—as if Nature alone
knows the way to halt these problematic
wanderings?  Even now, we pose
in our own disheveled pews
to utter careful gray hymns and
stew about the greens,
as if we have already been
forgiven and that true flowers
will someday forgive us.

                                             tvg, 11-03-09