“One must cultivate one’s own garden.”

—Voltaire

Scootching along on my butt

as I weed the large bed out back, 

I hear my mom, dead now

these past fifteen years,

as she sat near her flower beds 

pulling weeds. She complained

how she wasn’t as young as she 

was anymore. I laugh to myself,

 because neither am I anymore

as I pull my weeds forty years later.

(April 16, 2022)