Spring means I have to go outside again
and pretend to like it, put on the yoke
of growth for growth’s sake, socialize in the
hard sun, eat with bees, shave and paint my toes.
The tyranny of good weather is here:
seeds tick like time bombs in their paper sleeves,
hose looped like an open mouth mid-harangue.
Soon I’ll have to dead-head daily, prune, rip
out intrusive roots from a mistake we
made years ago. We had no money then
for landscaping so – despite all warnings –
we planted ivy to soften the bare
brick square with green. It made the house look like
it had lungs, breathing softly with the breeze.
This year, the cold wind and rain let me stay
in until June and ignore the ivy
that slithered around the hydrangeas’ necks,
cracked the bottom step open and even
licked the inside of the electrical
box with its sneaky tongues, the whole house
choked out by unchecked growth. My daughters used
to watch a show called Life After People
that left me breathless at puzzled pets in
packs foraging for food, buildings brought down
lightning fast by plants and weather: kudzu,
stinking sumac, water. Everything was
swallowed at 10x speed, first the garden
paths and mulch, chicken wire and stone walls,
every meager defense that kept non-pets
like squirrels, boars, birds and grubs from stealing meals.
Then it was roads, schools, ships and skyscrapers,
glass punched out by branches, layers of bird
poop thick on desks, terrifying, like stars
when you stare at them too long on clear nights.
Time to save some panicled hydrangeas:
armed with gloves, rake, clippers, sunblock, until
October releases me and I can
concede to entropy; back to my brick
and plaster fort where I can ignore ice
pulling eavestroughs down. Let it all go to
seed. Spring, though: my neighbor waves me over
to tell me his dog already killed three
groundhogs, two of them babies. I hold my
hand up like a visor to see him hoist
them like trophies, outlined against the sky.
Jennifer Blackledge is a Detroit-area poet who works in the automotive industry. She is the recipient of the 2025 Zocalo Public Square Poetry Prize and her work has appeared in publications like JAMA, Rattle, ONE ART, I-70 Review, Summerset Review, Kestrel, and more. You can find her work at www.jenniferblackledge.com.
