Tent Weeds

Monday, September 28, 2020

The rabbit-full coyote lazes in the bushes under a brown Cleveland sky where the clouds wear polka dot ties and green belts under a rainbow man that has soot on his sleeve coming from crumbling chimneys where the old mill used to make tires that rarely roll on these less-traveled-by roads.

A used-to-be-cute little girl in a ragged red dress and pasty-pink pinafore sucks at selling bedraggled bouquets to penniless people for a dime. They save their pennies to buy a bouquet for loved ones who have lost their lives to the tiny spiky Covid marauder — a remorseless, pitiless taker.

The girl’s dead plants smell dry: bound in the round with bits of straw found under chicks on ol’ Tate’s land where tents have popped up like weeds. No work. No jobs. No homes. This child lives where the tent weeds grow. More come. More go. Her mom and dad help her tie that which they think might sell to those still well.

It’s hell.