Weeds in the Rock, a reflection on where we are now
The world is burning,
And yet we’re all out jogging,
Selecting our produce,
Social distance gathering,
Updating our profile picture,
Ordering espresso martinis from delivery apps,
Zooming with our bosses,
Neighbors, friends, old classmates,
And grandmothers, too, oh yes, they’re there.
As each day passes,
Ice melts in Antarctica,
Children die of starvation,
Oil swirls in the ocean,
Elders gasp for air,
Police put guns to our temples,
Bombs go off in the “Holy Land”,
And potassium chloride stops an innocent beating heart.
The frost has melted for the year,
So, we get our gardens ready for the season,
Tiny cedar beads annihilate pregnant ticks and fleas,
The truck with the mulch comes down the driveway,
Cicadas rattle in the breeze,
We reach down to feel the cold dirt and move it side to side,
Disrupting the surface,
Preparing the garden,
Pulling weed from weed so the flowers will grow.
Back on the Hill
Politicians flash their bleached Vermeer’s,
Laughing about genocide in Palestine, Armenia, and here at home,
Minimizing insurrection,
Kicking their tiny feet up,
Sliding into the DM’s of their whores,
Then asking their wives to order them dinner,
And back to filibustering until the next election.
I reach into the dirt and yank at a fistful of gnarled weeds,
They don’t give way,
I pull and I pull and nothing,
The day is hot,
Sweat drips down my neck and glistens the weeds at my fingertips.
My shovel hits a rock and when I look deeper,
I see the weed grows out of that rock.
I try to dig around it, but the rock extends across the garden,
A concrete floor below the dirt.
How do you pull weeds when they’re cemented into the Earth?
How do you change the world when it’s covered in a concrete floor?
You can dig and dig but the rock will always be there,
We hit and hit and bleed and hit,
But the rocky floor will always be there.
And the weeds will continue to come up.
They’re always coming up.
They’ll always, always be there.
