Napo 4: Tumbleweeds

 

Tumbleweeds

 

What if one day they all decided

To take back this land that once

 

Was theirs, a wilderness of wasteland,

Flat plans stretching into the open sky

 

Of Nebraska? If they all collectively

Rolled into our neighborhood, a tangle

 

Of them, of tumbleweeds, a few at first,

A nuisance to be swept away, and then

 

a wave of them, a hurricane of sticks and brush

washing ashore in this Eden of a neighborhood?

 

This land was once a prairie, empty

Of everything but ecosystem. Now:

 

A clean swept street, a row of garbage cans,

Our beige houses popping up like weeds,

 

The green green green of every lawn

With sprinklers and fertilizer and mowers.

 

White picket fences. Perfect roofs, not

A single weed. And then, a million of them,

 

Brown and dying, desperate like mothers

To find a place to set their roots into the soil.

 

They come in hordes and roving masses,

 Bunching in the streets one windy afternoon,

 

Blocking the roads, climbing high

So they can reach the rooftops,

 

Everywhere they go they’re spreading seeds

On our precious lawns,

Taking back this land that once was theirs.

This needs some work, but I like the idea and seed of it. I'm thinking of writing a speculative poem about how the tumbleweeds, like a horde of mothers, decided enough was enough. Because there's nothing more powerful than a horde of mothers, a horde of tumbleweeds, a force of nature, is there?