Sunday, June 28, 2009

Spraying for Weeds

The weight of a full tank
Of herbicide presses
Hard plastic into my shoulder blades

It's a beautiful day
Sunshine, a gracious breeze from the trade winds,
And hundreds of trees laden with bright, ripening fruit.

The light sends up a rainbow from
The hissing poison mist
That I lay in a thin layer between the rows.

Smiles on our faces, we walk the lines
Of plants, giving an extra little bit of love
Here or there to the more sizable weeds

We have everything we need to do the job:
A spray tank for each of us, one cup of concentrate with each fill,
a small quirt of sticking agent, water to the top,
and a pack of cigarettes.
Pick your poison.

The foam writhes and bubbles as the smoke plumes and twists.
Fallen fruit blackens and curls with the lung tissue.
A cough and a wheeze hold the spray as efforts are made to unstop the opening.
Still curls the smoke.
Smiles again.

The great locomotive resumes it's duties,
A happy, rhythmically mechanical chugging and a steady puff from its stack.
Making the rounds on the track it was meant for,
or rather that was made for it.

Just a precaution we make to keep a safe distance between the trees overhead
And the ever-sprouting weeds below.



That wasn't meant to be an anti-smoking ad. Don't be offended.



Shhh...Nobody knows about this blog yet.

There are too many blogs.
There are too many bloggers.
There are too many bloggers that are friends of mine.
There are too many bloggers that are friends of mine that spread their secrets all over the internet in all manner of eloquently arranged media clips and poetic rhetoric for me not to break under the pressure and finally tell all of cyberspace in the same cryptic garble about my life, my love(s) and anything else I see fit to lay down.

So here it is.
Maybe when I let people know about it I'll have someone that sits alone in silence and reads and reminisces the same way I've been doing.