Haiku: A 300-year disagreement

 INSTRUCTIONS TO THE GARDENER

Chapter 1:

Gather your tools. You'll want them with you even if you don't see a need when you open the gate into the garden. Pull weeds from the stone path in the morning, before it gets too hot. You'll see there is wild lettuce growing unnoticed under low branches. If it's been a while since you looked there, one might well be over a foot tall. A thousand thorns. This won't be your first rodeo, not by now -- just put on thicker gloves and pull with both hands. Feel your weight on the ground. The tap root will do its appointed job, becoming one with the ground probably half the depth as the stem is tall. Nothing will move. Still, cut it with a gardening knife so it can't blow seeds, and finish the remaining weeding.

It will bleed milky poison, or medicine, depending on your point of view.

Chapter 2:

Return in time to the thorny stump. It'll regrow quite happily if you don't get it now, typically even happier than before, as though it thrives on spite. In fact, if you look closely, you'll see the dried remains of former stems around the fresh one. How easy it was to cut it and forget! Dig around it now to loosen its grip, and pull. You'll find, sometimes, that while you were working on easier weeds, it rooted clear to the center of the earth. Nothing will move.

Chapter 3:

Consider quitting. It is of little consequence. If you don't, kneel, wedge one foot against a nearby tree root, and leverage your whole arm on a nearby stone. Breathe through your root chakra, pray to your ancestors, and pull from the heart. 

The ground will shift slightly, in Western Australia.

The stone will crack in two.

The wild lettuce will not move.

Chapter 4:

Stare at it for a while. It will stare back, but don't imagine it is with contempt.

Chapter 5: 

Use your pick to dig out the foundation of the path, the very rock itself. Now you will be able to see what you believe to be most of the root. Pull it out. 

Time will tell whether what is left withers in the ground, or resprouts.

Happily.

Chapter 6:

Think for a while before you decide whether to replace the stone. Perhaps you will. Perhaps you will replace it upside down so that you can now see the other side. 

This does not matter. 

Wait, and see.