Pulling Weeds in the Garden

I won’t let anyone else help me
pull weeds, hundreds of polk
sprouts from a six-foot plant
I cut last autumn
before I decided to make
my garden on the spot,
before birds had a chance to eat
the magenta berries
and scatter them
far and wide.

I won’t let anyone help me
pull weeds in the garden
any more than I would let
someone help me write a poem.

It rained last night,
a gully washer in June.
I took off my shoes
in the garden
like we did when we set
tender tobacco plants,
pegged them in one by one
next to trotline cord or
baler twine,
stretched from one end
of the patch to the other.

I’m barfoot in the kitchen
at my computer,
writing words one after the other
across the page
until the lines have begun
to look like a poem.