Bamboo
In 1975 Billy Houston joined 4-H,
brought home a little plastic pot,
and his parents let him plant it.
Bless his heart, as they say in Mississippi
when they mean he really fucked up,
it was bamboo.
Which went crazy,
burrowed under the fence, spread, became a forest,
and every spring, sends out lateral runners—
forty-seven sprouts in just one day.
Ah, bamboo, I am too old to belly-inch
through the narrow crawl space under the deck,
clippers extended, to do battle
with your sheathed and jointed spears.
Every night, you elbow your way underground.
You grow so fast I can hear you groan.
But okay. I get it. You can’t help wanting to thrive.
You’re driven mad, as I am,
by the sweet shove of earth, the return of sun, of April.
ANN FISHER-WIRTH’s eighth book is Into the Chalice of Your Thoughts, a poetry/photography collaboration with Wilfried Raussert, with translations into Spanish by the Women in Translation group at U Wisconsin-Madison (U Guadalajara Press, 2023). Read more.