Yardwork

The yard is over grown: plants

I don’t recognize, a wisteria choking

a decrepit fence that a herd of rats use

on their evening commute to graveyard

shifts over a drooping garage.

But our strawberries a bright,

and there is a rose plant, and apples.

Miscellaneous life groans impatient.

Who is to judge wheat from tares?

Our fence drops lifeless

limbs into the alley.

The neighbors must be talking. Still,

I am untrained in pruning, and can think of more

pressing matters than weeding—seven seasons of Star Trek:

The Next Generation on Netflix for instance.