PoetryEtc Featured Poet: Mark Weiss   

Attention sways, can't fix
to anything.

Every morning he goes to his garden
barefoot, for the cold pleasure. Each day the beans
are a little taller; the wind
has flattened them against the wire
just long enough for a tendril
to take hold
so that the vine may climb
towards sunlight. All of this
as if by accident—as if untended: this row of lettuce,
this of beets,
a vagrant clump of weeds, a pile of cuttings. After all,
it's the ratty ends of things
he finds attractive. Little room
to cultivate a life
or a wife.

To accept one's lot may be
to become a pillar of sorrow,
he thinks, but to be alone
is salt itself.