With healthy nurturing, a garden plant
bears fruit abundantly. If you’d impede
its spread, then keep it dry and let its seed
be trampled in the noonday sun. It can’t
get up and walk away or change its slant
from prone to upright posture. Thus the weed
encroaches like a zealot to a creed
as shallow as its source — no gifts to grant.
But I, a human bean, can make a choice
to situate my roots in fertile ground.
Protected, fed, and loved in every phase
of growth, encouraged by the Gardener’s voice,
I’ll soon be sprouting produce by the pound
and bursting with the joy of rainy days.
———
2003 Mary Boren
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