There have been years I tilled the soil of my mind,
weeding out the passe, banal thoughts before I sowed a single seed.
I meticulously cultivated the plot of land that is the page.
Those years yielded a handful of well-constructed, satisfactory poems.
There have been years I doused the sidewalk of my brain with herbicides
and all manner of thoughts not fit for human consumption.
Entire months passed when I neglected to set aside any time
for watering, composting, or gardening.
I didn’t expect a single fruitful thought.
Still, a handful of poems poked their way up through the cracks,
identical in quality to the others.
Maybe I have less to do with this than I thought.
