Weeds Don’t Cry

Weeds don’t cry.

They stand stalwart 

in fields of corn,

in precise gardens of boxwood and lavender,

in chummy closeness with thyme and sage.

Then someone will shout:

“Pull up those damn weeds,”

and hands of all ages 

will strain against the  strength 

of those orphans of wildness and 

pull, pull, pull, 

or put foot to spade and

slice down to clear the root. 

In my salad days,

I pulled up sheaves of five foot tall

lamb's quarters to feed the breeder pigs. 

Lamb’s quarters, dandelion, amaranth, clover -

they grew between the crops and the rocks,

nourishing the pigs till the corn came in.

Someone once told me

that I was a weed - 

resilient, strong, able to flourish

in adverse conditions.

And I carried that thought 

throughout my life,

and felt proud ….

For when someone tells you that,

you never forget it. 

After years of garden work,

here’s how I feel about weeds:

I love them.

Kneeling in the middle

of  my tomato plants, 

I am contemplative and peaceful

as my reedy hands pull and pull and pull,

piling up the weeds of my past,

each a remembrance, 

an homage to enduring.

© Evie Safran, 2017

Men with picks and hoes clearing weeds in a field
Pullenvale, 1889
Photo held by John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Gravity

The footway we walk sketches brown 

lines on green fields that seem to hover 

over the Irish Sea. All around us sheep 

and cows hold their mouths to grass, 

unmindful of heaven. This perpetual path 

traces cliffs, cuts into rock, curdles to mud, 

descends onto beaches of rock draped in 

laver fronds, home to codling and flounder. 

Kelp, clams, fishermen, children who 

splash and swim, all know the sea’s routine. 

Even Annie the cab driver knows the tidal 

ways: in out in out days nights unending. 

It’s the far away sun and the pale moon.

We are new to this isle, walk the age-old 

ring around it, study a chart of days in May 

till we know the minute sea rise hits 

its highest, sinks to its lowest on the shores 

of Moelfre, Cemaes, Red Wharf Bay, and 

Puffin Island where rats have captured the roost.

Under May’s full moon water surges 23 feet, 

then falls away, a film rewound to its start.  

When the shore goes dry, tide pools become

small seas. People throw sticks, dogs bound out 

on a shimmering beach. Boats sit askew with

nothing to do. We walk the expanse of sand, 

sink into rivulets still flowing back to the sea. 

It’s the far away sun and the pale moon,

silence of unseen forces,

unremitting.

© Marti Snell, 2017

Traeth Mawr begins to emerge as the waters ebb
Photo by Eric Jones
from Wikimedia Commons

Conversation with a Hermit Thrush

A hermit thrush sang 

on the 12^th of March,

off stage,

twenty-five feet into the woods.

An introductory note, 

softly drawn

and then,

dismissing gravity,

he tossed little bells 

in an upward cascade 

into the needles of the pine

where they dissolved.

Hey, Thrush, I heard that.

That’s your spring song. 

You sang too early.

Your part starts in April.

What are your fellow-choristers

to think?

You’ll notice 

that the pine warbler came in 

exactly on the proper beat –

the first of March.

From high in the pine grove,

his disciplined trill 

introduced the whole piece.

And following a few measures later

on the second of March - 

or was it the third -

the phoebe entered on cue, 

raspy, 

as though a miniature wire brush were lodged in his throat.

So, Thrush,

what do you think you’re doing?

You can’t just start singing

whenever you want.

Can’t you hear you’re out of sync?

You come in 

when your part blends with all the other singers -

when the red-eyed vireo’s lilting voice teases from the treetops,

when the rose-breasted grosbeak,

in full blossom, 

gargles with a throat of liquid sunshine. 

You enter

just a few measures before your cousin, the wood thrush, 

returns to its summer haunts. 

Your voice can hardly compete with the arpeggios and trills

that the summer thrush flings throughout the forest. 

That’s your cue to fly north.

Why then, Thrush, do you sing out of turn in early March?

Is it because you need to ripple, massage, stretch, empower

the cords that will give life to your music?

Does this send a shiver through your body 

that casts off the chill of winter,

and readies you for your moment six weeks hence? 

Does this affirm that you are a singer,

a splendid singer, a yearning singer,

and that you know your time is coming?

I can understand that.

  © Jennifer Gaden, 2017

Hermit Thrush
Photo by CheepShot
from Wikimedia Commons