The Accord

There are no ghosts here.

Only the detritus of seasons past,

sun-bleached brown feeding violent

bursts of green growth, a native uprising

threatening to devour the bones & body of

my home as if it were already dead:

a corpse by contrast.

Only the evidence of another's

carefully cultivated civility lingers, a

one-sided imposition of politeness where

wilderness presses up against the edges,

where raspberries, now, run rampant: red

thorned raiders reclaiming territory

never willingly surrendered,

never really mine to return.

I spoke to the trees

while their branches were barren,

while they painted black lace onto

the dusk-dark sky. I approached on

bare feet buried in a half-acre of

damp grass and watched, wide-eyed,

while they danced their greetings

to the night, to this stranger

invading their long-held land.

I acknowledged their dominion.

I noted my own.

They answered with insects, with saplings

shot through wooden stairs, with wisteria

holding fast to lights I can't plug in anymore.

They answered with a bounty of berries in July,

with grass that grows too fast and ladybugs who

crawl across my bathroom mirror, who die

in irreverent piles on dingy windowsills.

They gave me a title I didn't recognize, a duty

I fulfilled without knowing.

They sent emissaries.

Death came as a cat, matted & ghastly grey,

half-absent jaw gaping, pale eyes terrified.

The Wayward sent a displaced racing pigeon,

far from home and starving, tagged & tired.

They all sent representatives:

the Vermin, beneath notice;

the Colony, feral and wary.

Still, there are no ghosts here.

Only the dead & dying, only the

short-lived and long-suffering.

Only the patient earth and the

black-lace trees, dead leaves and

new shoots. Change and its agents.

An accord and its witness.