"Sandspurs"

A Poem

Putting a plank of wood
Into the shed out back,
I noticed a whole garden
Of sandspurs growing wild
And flourishing:
Those insidious, innocent (at first) little plants
That sprout tiny green fluffballs
That suddenly turn into razor sharp
Orbs of pain this time of year.

I hate them.

Without thinking, I gave into my hatred
And, bare-handed, tried to rip them out
By the roots,
Clutching the whole batch
In my left hand.
In my annoyance with their existence,
I ripped them out,
And in return,
They stabbed at my fingertips,
Jabbing my skin
With white hot pinches.
Some of the points broke off,
Splintering down under my skin.

I tossed them all into the yard waste bin,
Satisfied that my anger had destroyed them,
Had been appeased.

But my self-righteous triumph
Felt thwarted
By the throbbing in my fingertips.
Two days later,
And the splinters will not come out.
My skin has covered them over
And eventually
A blister will form and harden around the splinter,
And eventually I’ll pull away the dead skin
And the splinter embedded in it
So I can heal.

But perhaps if I hadn’t wanted to pounce
On those thorny orbs so quickly,
Perhaps I might have saved myself
A lot of pain
If I had just donned a pair of gloves.