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