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