Weeds Day
Weeds enter the garden
in ways hard to explain—on a low breeze
like bell sounds that breathe out of a tower
mystery of current. Weed seeds drop
from catbirds in flight
some on wire perches and their mewing moves
over my stooped weeding self
and pierces summer harmless.
It’s becalming bell ringing change ringing
bird singing weed sprouting.
Pulling is the motion to earth and weeds
increase skyward as if reaching
for something that needs
no account or boundary. Self-sown Socrates,
sir, poison hemlock asks how,
and you answer in antiphony.
It’s Wednesday. Look behind you.
Look ahead. Janus. The combinations are infinite.
© Anne Harding Woodworth
Anne Harding Woodworth is the author of eight books of poetry and five chapbooks. Her most recent book is GENDER: Two Novellas in Verse. Her book TROUBLE received the 2022 William Meredith Award for Poetry, and an excerpt from her chapbook THE LAST GUN won the COG Poetry Award and was subsequently animated (see https://vimeo.com/193842252). Anne is a member of the Board of Governors at the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst, Mass.
(For more information, http://www.annehardingwoodworth.com.)
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