Ineradicable
July 31 2016


I swear, these weeds appear overnight
fast enough to see them grow.
As if I could lie, ear to the ground
and hear the sandpaper sound 
of fine particles of soil
pushed aside.
Greedy plants 
thrusting up into the cool layer of heavy air,
stems unwinding like time-lapse film,
unfurling leaves
beaded with dew.

Determined, insurgent
subversive,
they colonize the lawn
infiltrate flowerbeds. 
This one is a sickly green,
alien, toxic, malignant.
And tough, resisting my strong right hand;
until a thick fibrous root
erupts from the sod,
angling-up across the lawn
from cold dark earth.
Where night-crawlers, and grubs
and unspeakable bugs 
flourish,
an infernal netherworld
hiding in plain sight. 

Metastasis by sucker
grass on death-watch.
While I manically tear up roots,
cross-crossing the lawn 
this way and that;
as if a crush of groundhogs
had been at work.

But even deeper down,
tap roots
plunging like daggers
straight to the heart.



Frankly, my so-called lawn is mostly weeds, anyway. Good ones, like low-growing clover; and bad ones, like dandelions. Not to mention  entire phylums of unnamable things. 

They propagate by sucker, and grow unbelievably fast. I’ve gone about trying to tear up the hidden network of horizontal roots, but my effort just leaves the lawn a mangled mess, and hardly makes a dent in that secret subterranean network. 

Of course, we designate what is and isn’t a weed; nature is indifferent. So I could easily eliminate my problem through a simple act of definition:  call everything desirable, and declare victory!

I think the best definition of a weed has to involve this invasive quality, this opportunistic occupation of any vacant space. Which should be a mark of superiority; at least from an evolutionary point of view:   because wouldn’t this confer a tremendous survival advantage, be an indicator of superior fitness? Ahhh, but we human beings like control and consistency. A manicured lawn attests to our mastery, our dominion over the world. While a chaotic lawn screams failure, fatalism, submission.