2
Word Garden
By Tim Kahl
I went to check the soil in the library
to see if it was damp around the stacks,
the lovely spines of the biographies
poised for me to notice how straight they’ve
grown. Any one of those lives might spread
on to mine, a fence it could use to gain
a hold, a footing for the age I’m told
to live in. Look out! There goes
the age of reason over the cliff. Those
enlightenment fools have already been rolled.
It’s my job as teacher to introduce the age of
blatant interest to a roomful of students
who already know this better than me.
We hop along, our crazy dance of hope,
but it looks like we are going to drop down
to our knees — to plead, to look for
tracks, to check the soil around
the stacks and find one day a simple word
pushing up through the middle of a row of books
on money management, the currency
market, the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
It’s a word so simple that it must plant deep.
It does what it does without seeking reward
until it germinates and sprouts into
the head of an idealist
with enough courage to face the heat.