This Is Child’s Play

One morning, neighbors noticed
A new kind of sidewalk weed,
Not even green but pasty,

White as a basement mushroom
But curled up with leaves and black
Speckles and curlicues splayed

On the ghastly white foliage.
What kind of nuisance was this?
Were these weeds toxic? Were they

Mutants of some other weeds,
Freak crabgrass, dandelions,
Or spurge? They pulled easily.

They wilted under weed spray.
They burned to ash with a match.
But they always grew right back.

Nothing wanted to eat them,
Not aphids, snails, or dumb dogs,
Not the pestiferous deer

That haunted the neighborhood,
Not old, incontinent cats
That eased digestion with grass.

The white weeds never grew large,
But they persistently filled
Every sidewalk gap and crack,

And so services were called,
And a local meeting held,
And they were easily killed,

But again, they came right back.
The next neighborhood over
Proposed a quarantine, but

What was there to quarantine?
And besides weeds never grew
Past their original patch.

People half got used to them.
Children made up games with them,
Pretending to smoke them, or

Fly them like paper airplanes,
Or read them like secret scrolls,
Like the one you’re reading now.