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hands thinning radishes shoots

Proportions

A mélange of garbage / and triumphant blooms.
By Peg Duthie
Summer 2013 5.15.13

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Thinning out seedlings:
the harvest will yield enough
for bird and table.

The child wants to save
every plant we’re tugging out.
I talk about odds

and tithes. “God’s greedy,”
she declares. I reply,
“Aren’t we also?”

She frowns at the limp
green and white scraps on her palm.
She hasn’t seen yet

how compost is more
than a heap of waste and flies.
Hasn’t yet learned

how most of our lives
are a mélange of garbage
and triumphant blooms

—how incessantly
we measure ourselves to see
if we measure up.


This poem appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of UU World (page 18). See sidebar for links to related resources.

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