Alexander Theroux
Henry Thoreau who loved common weeds
hoed out with grunts by millions of farmers aiming
to clear the land, treasured their beauty
and found their appetite to live brave and bold
and radical, not the groveling exclamations of horror
all the hoeing Cushes, Nimrods, and Shaphats
in overalls, with their greedy furrow-fucking
dreams for money, zipping off their stalks and heads,
hated and sought to ridicule with low names
like pigweed. lousewort, chickweed, red root,
henbit, deadnettle, black medic, red root, nutsedge,
stinging nettle, common couch, finger grass,
fire tree, bindweed, crabgrass, quackgrass,
creeping charlie. Why, a weed, determined Henry,
is but a plant growing where not wanted,
filled with seeds, loathed because abundant,
hated because vigorous, despised because fecund,
emerging triumphant over all lands, lanes,
pastures, such is their pluck and vigor.
Henry for whom weeds lighted up like joggle sticks
cooked them, ate them, drank them in tea,
applied them on wounds, used them in salads,
and gave them lovely names like amaranth, ambrosia
mistflower, fairy cressula, white bryony.
What you may choose to insult by calling it
knotweed, goat's rue, mexican devil, or stinking iris,
and uprooting it or stomping out its face,
merely ponder the possibility, dear friend,
as you traipse through the local woods and gardens,
it is you yourself who's in the wrong place.