Proportions

Proportions

A mélange of garbage / and triumphant blooms.

hands thinning radishes shoots

© DLeonis/iStock

© DLeonis/iStock

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Thinning out seedlings:
the harvest will yield enough
for bird and table.

The child wants to save
every plant we’re tugging out.
I talk about odds

and tithes. “God’s greedy,”
she declares. I reply,
“Aren’t we also?”

She frowns at the limp
green and white scraps on her palm.
She hasn’t seen yet

how compost is more
than a heap of waste and flies.
Hasn’t yet learned

how most of our lives
are a mélange of garbage
and triumphant blooms

—how incessantly
we measure ourselves to see
if we measure up.


This poem appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of UU World (page 18).

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