Arboretum

Toeing a trench In the mulch between your patch and mine I stubbed myself on a treacherous thistle and I cried Out If it were merely a matter of A stray thorny bristle A barrier screen could be laid And I wouldn't miss you We could go the distance Were there more disease resistance on your part Nothing lasts forever when you never let it start Every day I pass this way I expect to find you waiting for me Beneath the branches of the buckeye tree Waving a palmetto frond Siphoning orange juice with a barber pole-ish wand Red horsechestnut? Clever disguise I, of course, guessed, but said you'd never naturalize Species zag as seasons zig Tough to keep plants in one place Any chance they get, they diaspore Or else transmutate Traipsing looping garden paths Chasing floodplain Tupelo Tracing roots to Ponderosa Tangling with a Strangler fig Now in an old growth Bald-cypress stand Knees locked in the strand swamp Black- and yellow-crowned Night Herons Abound in colonies Conferring on me Collective memory My eyelids flutter Orbits fill with water Hemlock in my hammock Limbs thrash, I spit and sputter Alligator drags me under Into the solution hole To protect me from Elements of fantasy That thrive in shady reality To offer respite from The demands of gardening To show me Trees are just the fruit Of an even bigger tree