A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media: First Person

Pruning
By Joyce Brown
October 31, 2007

I attack with fury bits of boxwood,
holly, bough of beech and maple;

round irregular and nameless bushes,
cut away dead branches from the ragged

pear and plum. The sun is hot;
I'll go inside and prune a closet

of the clothes I never wear but save
in hopes they may come back in style,

save because the wool or cotton's pure.
Prune the bookshelves of best sellers,

prune out Kierkegaard and Kant, weed
from drawers their growth of letters,

clear the verbiage away. So the outside,
so the inside. Prune the inside,

inside me. Root out slothfulness
and anger, lust and coveting,

envy, gluttony and pride. Prune out
all my fear of shrinking; let me lie down

finally, a leafless, wordless, pageless,
priceless, pink uncluttered Matisse nude.

About the author:
I have taught English high school, and fiction and poetry writing at the college level. My poems have appeared in Poetry, The American Scholar, Yankee, The Potomac Review, The Tennessee Quarterly, The Christian Science Monitor, and other journals and papers.