Way deep in the weeds
over a solitary flowering yellow dandelion
in my Xeriscape garden, which by definition,
is a cool collection of weeds,
my mission is clear.
Clear the rocky path of my buddies, my kind:
thorny, invasive, noxious guys driving my wife crazy.
I genuflect on my Ace Hardware knee pads
armed with my Japanese garden knife (best tool ever!)
and pause ...
What if this is not one of them?
What if it’s a black-eyed Susan
or some exotic, native plant I’ve never heard of?
Raising a finger, I exclaim:
“There’s an app for that!”
Let it confirm, decide, pass judgement
taking away any guilt I may have
when I pull that morning glory
misidentified as field bindweed
out by its roots.
Just blame the AI.
After all, AI is already pulling out weeds
in our computers through coding automation
eliminating defects plaguing software
since a real bug crawled into a vacuum tube
glitching the entire mainframe
while laying the blame on code for being “buggy.”
Nevertheless, we pull out the programmers
who have pivoted away anyway to game changing
genetic bioengineering solving life’s most thorny problems:
cancer, Alzheimer’s, bipolar, Covid-19,
feeding starving billions;
but, most importantly, genetically mutating
weeds into blond, blue-eyed Barbie flowers –
generation B, if you will, who just might
tweak the wrong gene, provide the wrong prompt, pull the wrong lever
or simply not know they are about to rewrite our genome
eliminating future genius, releasing new pandemics, or
wiping out the very plants I am cultivating.
Who gets to decide or not to decide
to turn over these complex “programming decisions"
to Watson’s heirs who will then decide:
who gets treatment or food, who is flower or weed?
A chill comes down my spine.
I look over my shoulder
and survey the landscape around my diverse, native garden
wondering why not leave the weeds who have weapons
for mutually assured destruction
to choke each other out.
I back my hand away leaving one
magnificent, conscious, yellow flowery thing
to stand while I go back inside to proclaim
to my wife, boss, and software friends:
I am ready to retire.
I’ll have ChatGBT write that resignation letter.