war on the way
I pull enormous weeds
from my tiny garden

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Margarita Engle

Margarita Engle is the Cuban-American author of young adult novels in verse, including The Surrender Tree, which received the first Newbery Honor ever awarded to a Latino. Her most recent book is Hurricane Dancers, the First Caribbean Pirate Shipwreck.

10 thoughts on “”

  1. I would normally find ‘enormous’ too ponderous a word for haiku, but here it speaks eloquently of the enormity of the contrast between the individual and the apparatus of the state. The poet’s tiny garden tells of the unevenness of that match yet her action witnesses her steadfastness in the face of such overwhelming odds. But those enormous weeds will grow faster than she can pull, as we all know (I guess that’s democracy)

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  2. well, well, well…

    yes, there is something special about this moment, but knowing me, you are bracing yourselves for my “however”.

    however, it imprinted my mind as a two lines haiku.

    even though we have a second and even a third line, as i read them, they suddenly became one; as though we had a complete sentence.

    “i pull enormous weeds from my tiny garden” seems a tad bit frivolous.

    hmmm, a possible remake:

    war on the way
    enormous weeds i pull
    tiny garden space

    norman, “democracy”….i don’t think so, the match doesn’t reach that stately level, perhaps a bullying; what about dictatorial…

  3. this pioem is even more powerful when one
    considers that bush and his cabal cooked, twisted
    and downright lied to pull this war off. even
    more powerful when one digs down to the roots
    and finds oil as the reason. great poem ms engle.

    confederate cemetery
    the sky above
    half grey half blue

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