The Way It Is

Prepare the ground, I told her,
channel a straight row, select
the seeds, drop them in the
open furrow, and cover them.
Observe these facts, I said, to keep
a garden from being helter skelter.
A radish seed won’t become a turnip
because it’s in a turnip row.
Seeds carry instructions,
even know the season, look how corn
sweats and heats at planting time.
(Lectures in her ears, a mosquito buzz in bed.)

Why tug nature’s skirts, she asked?
Let things grow their own way,
all this digging and raking and
pulling a string tight just to make
a straight row—does a radish care?
Why not crooked rows, room for more
seeds? Look at you pulling weeds,
don’t weeds have rights, aren’t they
alive with a will to grow?

I chopped angrily, hoed out
a young cabbage plant, left
a thistle standing