Fittingly, a fun thread --
I was late to the party, but Light was, I think, my second acceptance – SCR and “Those Hills” was my first.
This ditty is due out from Light any day now… I corrected the proofs in December. (I hope this isn’t “bad form”.)
The Creed of the Weed, or
Must We Cultivate our Garden?
No one feels a need
to praise the common weed.
It’s commonness, indeed,
that makes something a weed.
We defend our manicured Zion
from hordes of dandelion;
the barbarous Huns of thistle
get mace and our righteous dismissal.
The weed, it does not care.
It too must grow somewhere.
Its resolve seems but to harden
at the ramparts of the garden.
It is as if the weed
confessed another creed
and believed itself as just
as crusading gardeners must.
The weed would seem to say:
“Let Nature have her way;
the spheres, their perfect movements
aren’t helped by man’s improvements.”
It sounds familiar – why, it’s
like the weed was reading Leibnitz.
But, dissatisfied to a man,
we try to force Nature’s hand:
we raze the hill, divert the rill,
to carve our will in the grudging till;
we cast out native flora
for cultures we’d like more of --
after the apple, we swear
on the bible of Voltaire.
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