an uber driver once scorned our Depression Lawn:

“you need to do something about that”

idling on the fissured driveway

sneering at the cacophonous overgrowth 

where a phalanx of routinely shorn grass once dwelled 

a weekly violence

in the name of respectability

 

every morning a hummingbird shimmers in approval

greets our Depression Lawn as bounty

our verdant phoenix rising and rising

watered by grief, fertilized by paralysis

airspace for things that fly, playground for things that crawl

bursting with goldenrod and bull thistle and milkweed and

paradoxically,

joy

 

far too often

to maintain is to destroy

control, consume, conceal, conquer

unroot, unearth, unlearn, unlove

 

but sometimes

other things are necessary

to maintain

the self:

​

slough off the skin of etiquette

land bare in the brambles’ waiting embrace

bow down to the unruly