It's just poetry, it won't bite

Weeds


08.04.09 Posted in today's words by

You’ve read his work here before (Birdsong) and you will read it again. Bryan Borland will be featured in the upcoming Ganymede One, the first ever annual anthology published by the quarterly journal Ganymede. He is also hard at work finding a published home for his first ever chapbook, Little Black Book (click here to read more). This poem makes marvelous and slightly subversive use of metaphor. Borland’s voice is very personal; he interacts with both the reader and the subject of his poetry. Read this and you will have a ready excuse to shirk any gardening you might have put off.

Weeds
By Bryan Borland

They populate the soil
in our front yard
alongside
the marigolds and roses,
pretenders,
trying to blend in,
sometimes succeeding.
Sometimes they grow taller
than their counterparts,
haughty and proud
to have survived
another weekend.
I eyed them warily at first,
taught that
if you let one in
others are sure to come,
schooled that
they will taint the rest,
stain the innocent seedlings
and shade the truly deserving
from God’s gaze.
It is perhaps
a mark of my own kind heart
I pay them no mind
another Saturday morning,
let them flaunt
their wild difference
one more week.



4 Responses to “Weeds”

  1. Ray Sharp says:

    Bryan, I love this poem. I love the idea, and the image of the weeds in the garden, on a literal level and of course as a way to respect and celebrate diversity, “their wild difference.”
    I like the meaning-laden word choices — “pretenders trying to blend in” (‘pass’), “haughty and proud” (pride!), “flaunt” (which is used so derisively in some circles). The absurdity of “stain(ing) the innocent seedlings” and the rest of that section is a great flash of your wit and sarcasm. Of course, we all know that no seedlings are truly inocent as they are born into sin. But I digress.
    Kudos Annmarie for pairing this with the lovely garden poem below it. We are all weeds, interdependent, in the garden.

  2. Jean says:

    “haughty and proud to have survived another weekend.”

    “Allow them to flaunt their wild difference one more week.”

    I love the irony, the gentle humor of your poem.

  3. SARI says:

    garden poetry true and to the point —

    lovely

  4. SARI says:

    a real life lesson

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