What unusual willowy wheat-like stalks

I exclaimed from the car, stop let’s pick some dig some

Let’s plant them at home, graceful reeds with slanty

drooping heads, lithe and lyrical, let’s put

them in a vase. I wonder what they are called, exotic like desperados.

I skipped across the ditch, took out my clasp knife

Cut dozens of six foot stems and clutched them close.

Aren’t they lovely I asked

my husband agreed

Let’s figure out what they are he queried

Let’s research, investigate, plumb wells of information

Of course I answered, enchanted by his enthusiasm so

We poured over guides of grasses of roadside growings

I found them I shouted

a treasure hunter in a jungle Shangri La, reading

They are phragmites an invasive malignant

grass unwanted unwelcome in this great country

Oh no I said tearing fearing encroaching weeds, so

Gathered up all the stems not one fragment fell upon our

Soil, and tossed the foragings of foreign matter into the trash, bash

Said there you alien things, you had the worst of origins.