MENTAL HOEING
Breaking the soil of her mind
was an old habit as she plied
the hoe back and forth over the year
to see its design, the cut and stripped
images of reason stacked in rows
of answered arguments. She swore
at the stones, the matted grass
and stubborn clay that held her back
as though to a winter still unprepared
for spring. Was she never to be spared
from questions rooted in the past?
She attacked the clods with wrath
until there were holes in the ground,
then her thoughts crumpled down,
taking her strength with them.
Aching from remembered resentment,
she turned to the struggle within herself,
but moved lightly now and penitent,
trying to ease the rebellious soil
and soften it, to make it pliable
to the new seeds, the new demands
of the changing season, knowing plants
thrive better in kindness than bitterness.
And suddenly the year stood plain, at rest.