When Weeds Sing

 Bethany Reid

Like that da capo aria from The Messiah,

the weeds are despised.

Not to say they are Christ in the garden

only that they spring up, bidden

or unbidden, as you kneel in the soil

The weeds are all bravado—

think of shotweed, how the green shoots

dare you, their voices a crescendo

as you yank them up, how seeds scatter, 

your knees pressing them into earth.

Let the bright seraphim—

Bethany Reid‘s poetry books are Sparrow, which won the 2012 Gell Poetry Prize (Big Pencil Press 2012), Body My House (Goldfish Press, 2018), and The Thing with Feathers, which was published as part of Triple No. 10 (Ravenna Press (2020). Bethany lives in Edmonds, Washington, and blogs at http://www.bethanyareid.com. You can find her on twitter @OneReidReading.

© Variant Literature Inc 2021