under his thumb
hogweed grows all over england — it is
a disciple of every hedgerow of every
untamed lawn and now in the
sweet suffocation of summer it
forms a purpling fist ready to split
wide open into flowers — unfurling like a
cupped palm. I watch it from my perch
on the edge of living and wonder
at that bruised and bursting flesh at
the abundance of sex showering around us in
the cloak of an innocent june and I
think of how man has collected and trimmed and
controlled and idolised and policed and brutalised these
masterpieces of the aeons since before
he had the wit to conjure eden and he is
tearing up the hogweed again — roots left
to the rot and he is milking the cow and he is
shooting the crow right out of the sky for
that is not quite the right kind of beauty see how
clever her eyes how showy her flight she is
bad news and these flowers they are wild
in all the wrong places and they do not smell
of heaven and so they must be cut they must be cut
they must be cut until they learn
their place
