Poetry: Resilience

{First published at Vita Brevis Press, July 2019}

Resilience

Each summer woods threaten

to take this place. Salmonberry, elder,

the Sasquatch mittens of devils claw,

encroach on the patch around our house

then swallow it whole. We have never had

the wild and cloying cucumber, but there

he is, showing out of nowhere, like sea scum,

algae blooms, crops of a warmer earth.

On this misty day, the flora don patinas of brilliant

resilience, like they dare us try

and stop them, same as we did in our twenties,

when fluids coursed through and we toiled

and reached, and our dreams were a bow that shot

us every moment, every day, to the final power.