Weeds
“Submit to the will of your maker.”
That is what the rose bush tells the briar patch.
“But God is my maker, just like He’s yours,” says the briar patch.
The briar patch did not begin the conversation; the rose bush put the question first.
“God made me strong. Man made me beautiful. What has Man made of you?”
“I don’t give a damn what Man does. When he touches me, he bleeds.”
The briar patch answered reluctantly at first. Not anymore.
“Man tends to me,” said the rose bush.
“Man would kill me if he could,” answered the briar patch.
The rose bush’s question took the briar patch by surprise. Not anymore. Now it’s fighting back.
“You should submit. This is Man’s garden.”
“I’m not a slave to Man. Man hasn’t clipped my thorns.”
“Thorns are God’s mistake. I no longer need them. Man has tamed my nature. I have no need of thorns. Man puts up a wire to protect me. Man protects me because I am beautiful. Why does Man want you dead?”
The briar patch might feel threatened but is secure in its own strength.
“I’m not beautiful because Man says so. I’m not beautiful because Man made me so. Your beauty is fake, made in Man’s image.”
The rose bush might have blushed. It’s easily offended.
“You drag yourselves along the ground, while we rise sublimely to heaven,” the rose bush observes. “You creep upon the ground, as all evil things do.”
The rose bush snapped out this observation, poisonously.
“I grow free. Nothing confines me.”
“Until Man pulls you up by the root.”
“My roots run deep. Deeper than Man can reach. Yours don’t.”
“I have no need to cling to the ground, because I am beautiful and protected by Man. You’re a weed. What is the value of a weed?”
The briar patch felt it was an unfair question to begin with. Now it’s asked again, the briar patch is ready to answer.
“Roses have thorns, and thorns are for weeds. What then of the raspberry bush, the hardy orange, the Chickasaw plum? May weeds bear fruit?”
“Fruit born of weeds is sour, bitter, unwholesome.”
“What fruit do you make?”
“I am beautiful.”
The rose bush is getting tired. The briar patch, provoked, is relentless.
“I think I’m beautiful,” says the briar patch.
The briar patch could do this all day.
“Still,” says the rose bush, resignedly, “you have yet to answer my question. What, pray, is the point of weeds?”