A few weeks back
- what must have been five, or six
even though it felt more like two
I went to the tree lawn in front of work
with the most ridiculous tools;
a flathead screw driver, and a box cutter
and dug up as many weeds as I could find.

Because it had rained, the dirt gave way easily enough,
and the plants came out easily enough,
by the root.
Or so it seemed.

What makes a weed,
a weed?
Who gets to decide which things that grow
are grown usefully?
Is it the spikey things,
or the bitterness?
I used to use dandelion greens in my lobster salad,
and indeed used to make wishes with the flowers.
But evidently, this is actually frowned upon.

And indeed, what I've learned
are weeds are more clever things
than you and I will ever be.

I came back to the tree lawn
a week or two later.
And while only one or two had popped back up
underneath - that's where the nightmare was:
I had never seen so many roots,
such thick roots
that tangled my hands.
What grew above ground,
that's only a mole.
The real monster was underneath, the entire time.

And how could I fight that?
No spray, no knife, no forceful pulling
was going to uproot this thing,
that had lodged itself securely under the pavement.

I said to myself
"this will make good poetry,"
but once you've told yourself that
the writing is pretty much shit.

So I suppose the choice is mine
for now
to start ripping cutting burning spraying,
or,
to coexist with the weeds.
One requires work;
work that I have no idea will even be worth it.
The other requires me to be someone I'm not
and to look the other way
knowing those roots lay just under my feet
ready to pop their little weeds through the grass.