Dishing the dirt

 I watched the neighbor across the way get off his riding mower and sink a shovel into the ground. He'd been yanking weeds out of the parched ground for an hour. I assumed he was going for the roots. I watched in disbelief as he unearthed a thick blue hose. He wrestled that thing like a mighty snake hunter, twisting and turning and tugging. I figured it was his underground watering system. When it wouldn't surrender, he got on a little back hoe tractor and sunk the metal teeth into the earth, snapped that blue hose and launched it airborne. He wiped the sweat off his brow and flung that hose and probably a swear word or two.

I recognized his feeling of success. There are times when I struggle with my writing. I wrangle a word, a paragraph, a title with the sweat of my brow. Then, I collapse in relief when I achieve good results.

A few hours later a pickup truck double parked on our four lane road, then another and another. I looked out the door and wondered why the cable company had so many service trucks in front of the neighbor's house. You guessed it! He had dug up the underground, buried T.V. cable.

Digging to the Roots is a poetry anthology calendar at Writers Rising Up.  The guidelines stated that writers could purchase a calendar if their poem was chosen, which sounds like a vanity press. But if this is something you would be interested in, check it out. Just be sure when you submit to a publication that you dig deep; read the fine print.