Because That's What She's Named It
Behind the house a thigh-high wilderness
thrives. Grasses menace with no regard
for borders of beds. Brave arugula
among rampant oxalis. Kale struggles, stunted
in the shade of the neighbor’s looming live oak.
Collard babies, submerged in wild green,
try to raise their skimpy petioles
into what light might reach them. A density
of nasturtiums, leaf-to-leaf, floats
below the naked apple with its hundred
unpruned limbs.
A woman in me knows it’s her job
to crouch and save what the invaders
choke, as though she could shrink
herself down and crawl between stems and blades,
see close up what should stay and what
she should excise.
It’s too much. No one grooms
a wilderness.
She kicks shoes off in the mud room.
Knows exactly where her pen and notebook
wait, not buried under anything.
How will she spell the breeze
tickling the tangles she’s abandoned?
Patricia Zylius is the author of the chapbook Once a Vibrant Field. Read more.