Epistle Poem by Morgan Michaels

It is evening, the clouds mass goldenly in the West.
I have been doing garden patrol-
the perfect antidote to a long day's work.
By this time there has been considerable cooling
of what was, in truth, a very humid day.
So, I've gone to the terrace, my kingdom,
to do some weeding-
and, taking no prisoners, as it were,
attain the first true satisfaction of the day.
There is a sultry pleasure in pulling weeds
up by the hair, you must know, and in the way
they slide from earth with little coaxing
till their hirsute feet, still soil-clumped,
are exposed to the biting air
and I am obliged to shake the dirt
back into the pot-
for to do otherwise were a waste of good dirt.
With the smiling prerogative of a gardener
I drop them onto the tarmac
to wither in the sun-
a guilty pleasure it is,
I am sorry to say, yet,
one to which I am given;
For weeds are astonishingly prolific
and reproduce nearly as fast as humankind:
I thank my stars and the powers that be
that the business is not reversed
and that Fate has given the weeds no power
to pull me from my bed, shake me and drop me onto the tarmac
to wilt in the hot, summer sun
and to emerge as mattress-stuffing.
'Tough luck', I tell each
laying it beside its stricken brethren.
Indifferent to the carnage
I'm encouraged in my task
by a silent chorus of nearby roses,
a diatribe, in fact
who consider the weeds a menace-
who share the view
that the weeds might leach from the soil
nutriment that might otherwise be theirs.
'The weeds will supplant us all', they warn,
and the delicate scent of roses
will no longer permeate the air.
They threaten to secede from the garden
leaving in shock its pleasant unity-
press forth big thorns and blossom little
I don't know. Their theory is moot,
but more inclined to roses than weeds,
I concur for the moment and continue weeding
to the relief and silent plaudits of the roses
who for my complicity breathe easier.
Between weeds, I sip yellow Corona.
Perhaps I oughtn't but reason,
correctly, I think, that drinking cerveza Mexicano
improves one's Spanish-
important in this town, with its secret influxes
and Section 8 housing.
All around, the sun lights the water towers sidelong:
the ones that support the sky.
For a moment they glow goldenly, as if aflame
then retire and fade into violet darkness;
the moon, too, quarter-lit by the sun but low
to the horizon, levitates close with un-natural ease
and boasts of its roundnesses-
more apparent now than at night, when high up in the sky
it appears sort of flat and two-dimensional.
'Goodbye sun, goodbye moon, goodbye roses', I say,
'and goodbye weeds- what's left of you',
and go in to dinner.