Tangled with twigs, twisted trees deepen
Grasping the ground, giving for no one.
Invasives shrieking, inglorious agony
Pluck and pull them, piercing thorn strikes.
Welts well to life, workpants no comfort
Deep held dreams dragged from darkness,
Roots ranging outward, reached with violence
Cut and culled, crawling vines cast down.
War has been waged, we wonder who won.
----
We go to war with the garden while I still have my coffee mug warm and fragrant in my hand. We begin the battle armed with clippers and workpants, gloves and shoes, the rattling wheeze of a chainsaw, the dead calm of Miami February breaks.
The invasives put up a fight, a battle hard won. We are marred with scratches, cuts, bruises. Lines of red that will not go down, welts where our legs were subjected to the stranglehold of a plant I cannot identify. We pluck them screaming from the Earth, mandrake roots and deep vines. Tiny squirming insects roil from dirt that has gone too long unfurrowed.
Immigrants, we uproot them to make more room for the natives. Cut their stems, dig up their roots, our feet press against stumps as our backs press to oaks until we have the proper leverage. One last push, someone rides the stump, afternoon sunlight filtering through hair matted with the sweat of a battle too long. One last effort, a concerted try bracketed with the cadence of a sailing song and the trunkless yields, fallen. We cast them wilted and diminished in ramshackle piles, they who only wished to reach for the sun.
I jump, grasp the low-lying vines and hang, suspended between destruction and flight.
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