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the books of 2007
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    The Best Ribs
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    Thursday, June 01, 2006

    "Bindweed"

    American Life in Poetry: Column 062
    By Ted Kooser
    U.S. poet laureate 2004-2006

    Gardeners who've fought Creeping Charlie and other unwanted plants may sympathize with James McKean from Iowa as he takes on Bindweed, a cousin to the two varieties of morning glory that appear in the poem. It's an endless struggle, and in the end, of course, the bindweed wins.
    Bindweed
    There is little I can do
    besides stoop to pluck them
    one by one from the ground,
    their roots all weak links,
    this hoard of Lazaruses popping up
    at night, not the Heavenly Blue
    so like silk handkerchiefs,
    nor the Giant White so timid
    in the face of the moon,
    but poor relations who visit
    then stay. They sleep in my garden.
    Each morning I evict them.
    Each night more arrive, their leaves
    small, green shrouds,
    reminding me the mother root
    waits deep underground
    and I dig but will never find her
    and her children will inherit
    all that I've cleared
    when she holds me tighter
    and tighter in her arms.

    Reprinted from "Headlong," University of Utah Press, 1987, by permission of the author, and first published in "Poetry Northwest," Vol. 23, No. 3, 1982. Copyright (c) 1982 by James McKean, whose most recent book is "Home Stand," a memoir published in 2005 by Michigan State University Press. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

    posted by Nichole @ 9:48 PM  

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