Trash

Endlessness enfleshed in emerald & frost & shades I couldn’t

             name without further study. All the common weeds are here 

& flourishing: bristly oxtongue, barnyardgrass, broadleaf

             plantain, you know the line from Whitman, about dandelions,

which rise through winter white as if no artifice of fashion, business,

             politics had ever been, a reminder to return to the elemental.

I feel that now, standing here, amidst what I later learn

             are not filaree or velvetleaf, which I love the look of from

my book of flowers, the sound too, the music of the weeds

             is what really gets to me, purslane & ladysthumb, London rocket,

marestail, junglerice, the joy of discovery evident in each honorific,

             belying, of course, their social status, or the verb form, which,

like dust, destroys the thing it names. And what is it that marks

             this distinction exactly, I ask an old friend from my years

uptown, a professional. Competition, he says, smiling. Wildness.