Always the kid's job to kill thistles.
Strap on your tin tank of 2-4-D.
Raise up your sprayer with its plastic hose,
The umbilical cord for the poison.
They stand there, arrogantly alive
In the wheat, flax, oats, beans, alfalfa:
Golden-flowered sow thistle,
Purple horny Canadians,
Bull thistle, pig weed, buffalo burr, cocklebur.
Dows them with death mist.
At first they feel nothing,
No trembling in the armored stalk,
But come back tomorrow —
Dried heads slumped to one side,
Green leaching toward copse gray.
In a week, they'll be finished.
Does the wheat smile? Does the alfalfa sigh?
Does the flax nod as if it wished
To pat you on the head and say:
Good boy. Job well done.
That's farm work for children.
Behead the chickens, castrate the pigs,
Poison the thistles. Teach them
What the world is going to be like.
Don't weep too hard for the thistles.
They will be back next year.
They will outlast you. Always.
That's what you learn from them.