Trash
Endlessness enfleshed in emerald & frost & shades I couldn’t
name without further study. All the common weeds are here
& flourishing: bristly oxtongue, barnyardgrass, broadleaf
plantain, you know the line from Whitman, about dandelions,
which rise through winter white as if no artifice of fashion, business,
politics had ever been, a reminder to return to the elemental.
I feel that now, standing here, amidst what I later learn
are not filaree or velvetleaf, which I love the look of from
my book of flowers, the sound too, the music of the weeds
is what really gets to me, purslane & ladysthumb, London rocket,
marestail, junglerice, the joy of discovery evident in each honorific,
belying, of course, their social status, or the verb form, which,
like dust, destroys the thing it names. And what is it that marks
this distinction exactly, I ask an old friend from my years
uptown, a professional. Competition, he says, smiling. Wildness.
Notes:
Audio version performed by the author.
Source:
Poetry
(January 2023)
