Remedial Weeding
       

You don't need to know its name
to know it is a weed; if it
has taken hold between two
paving bricks, if its thin root
or complex undermop is wedged
where the concrete riser joins the concrete step,
then assuredly it is.
It is redundant, stubborn work,
to which you squat or kneel or bend,
moving lowly in one manner
or another over the entire area
to be covered so that, naturally,
afterwards, you'll ache.

And yet, what better use
could you have put these to:
one yellow-handled tool
and two tightening circles of thought?
For those times when the heart, still
resonant and stunned,
is dominant,
this is the kind of work you want,
mindless work, where it is best to look
no more than one weed ahead,
and where the iron inability to set a course
drills the focus downwards
with single-mindedness and depth.

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Copyright © 2011 Julie Hanson All rights reserved
from Unbeknownst
University of Iowa Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission