They don't want to be your hedge,
Your barrier, your living wall, the no-go
Go-between between your property
And the prying of dogs and strangers. They don'tWant to settle any of your old squabbles
Inside or out of bounds. Their new growth
In three-foot shoots goes thrusting straight
Up in the air each April or goes offHalf-cocked sideways to reconnoiter
Wilder dimensions: the very idea
Of squareness, of staying level seems
Alien to them, and they aren't in the leastDiscouraged by being suddenly lopped off
Year after year by clippers or the stuttering
Electric teeth of trimmers hedging their bets
To keep them all in line, all roughlyIn order. They don't even
Want to be good-neighborly bushes
(Though under the outer stems and leaves
The thick, thick-headed, soot-blackenedElderly branches have been dodging
And weaving through so many disastrous springs,
So many whacked-out, contra-
Dictory changes of direction, they've lockedThemselves together for good). Yet each
Original planting, left to itself, would be
No fence, no partition, no crook-jointed
Entanglement, but a tree by now outspreadWith all of itself turned upward at every
Inconvenient angle you can imagine,
And look, on the ground, the fallen leaves,
Brown, leathery, as thick as tongues, remainAlmost what they were, tougher than ever,
Slow to molder, to give in, dead slow to feed
The earth with themselves, there at the feet
Of their fathers in the evergreen shadeOf their replacements. Remember, admirers
Long ago would sometimes weave fresh clippings
Into crowns and place them squarely on the heads
Of their most peculiar poets.
David Wagoner
Copyright © 1997 by the Modern Poetry Association.
Poetry
Volume CLXXI, Number 1
Eighty-Fifth Anniversary
Special Double Issue
October-November 1997
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.