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Virginia Creeper
by Kristina Woodhill
You always answer
summer's warm invitation
eagerly creeping
through my lush shrubbery
Vining like stealthy green snakes,
knitting and purling through our cut-leaf elderberry,
coveting and covering my clematis' trellis
Your five-fingered leaves
palm over our pinnates
like pirates swarming aboard
laden galleons
Foreign forms and features explored,
xylem pulse beneath your own,
upward becomes attainable,
shape taker, engulfing shadow maker
We wood-frame dwellers
forbid your sidling under house siding,
offer no stone-roughened niches,
tendrils and hold-fast finger tips
at your beck, draping instead
around our garden's neck
Only corn stalk sentinels,
too easily distinguished
from your low, mounding flow,
make my patrolling simple,
make my pruners
snip in time
October, wild Virginia,
your stretching arms
that
evaded
my blades,
now amaze,
your
streaming
autumn
menses,
crimson proclamation
of your apical dominance
stands
me
still
Rivers of red leaves
afloat on autumn air waves,
barren vines fade,
disguised, twining
co-opted branching
Now we see you
(now we )
You, quietly, perennially prepared,
mapping out next year's route
already eyeing
pretty little
Rose of Sharon
across our walk
11/24/2020 Posted on 11/24/2020
Copyright © 2024 Kristina Woodhill
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