When is the time right to do this? To cut?

And what if I left it? Spared it the blade?

It wouldn’t care as it basked in the heat.

waiting for nothing as it strives to grow

upward, outward, greenward, a green word; rain

This is the knot, a weed or not a weed?

And if not grass what is it but a weed?

Those growing the fastest are the first cut

Impertinent upstarts hammered by rain

leveled all at once by the sweeping blade

To dare the edge of fate. Ever to grow

ever to know the way up through the heat

How was it I ever withstood that heat?

Like my grandfather I grew like a weed

learned that growing up didn’t mean to grow

Like a weed I reached out to feel the cut

of the edges of a voice like a blade

Shedding more tears than blood in a warm rain

No amount of crying will stop the rain

No amount of sweat will lessen the heat

Only putting a keen edge on the blade

is what enables the mower to weed

out the ones that don’t make the cut

and let the things that really matter grow

It was my calling to help things to grow

My power was in calling down the rain

With the compassion of a scythe I cut

through all the vines that held me near the heat

Freeing myself, a solitary weed

Finding the cutting edge of my own blade

To know and care for each and every blade

of grass was far easier than to grow

apart from that place the way a wild weed

is scattered afar by the wind and rain

When I remember working in that heat

I will know when the time is right to cut

From the cloth, from the earth, cut by a blade

forged in the heat of Summers past to grow

in the rain the way a weed grows. Apart.