Alchemisland

Requisition by growing things, land’s reacquisition 

Tin roof suffused with suffocating kudzu in the fullness of its zombie bloom

It looms over everything, fastening like a glue to the fixtures

Until it is the only texture, it dies in winter but next year is revisited

Phalanxes of axe-headed plants finance the verdant assault

Silent violence, it needs neither silage nor drainage to pilot

Itself to thriving, those by driving see a green hell roadside

An old drive in movie theatre ruined with wounding kudzu

Stealing films like a pirate, green much admired by the Irish

Like a goblin greened paintbrush, or emeraldine admix boiling in pyrex

Ponds rimmed by bullrushes, bushels of ranunculus like Russian Doll roses

Pummeling back the underbrush

Bare dogwood bushes urchinesque, like an unfortunate gelatin abominate

Speared to death by a paladin in vomit-coloured cloth cloak, emblazoned

With a razor below a swan-faced sailing boat bound for grey havens

Oldflower gaunt greying, the garden’s greylings stooped mavens

Fit for grey gardens, once apology-soft petals hardened

Crisp underfoot the wood’s brittle hair in clumps, spent cells

Broken shells from the twelveatnight side of the tree of life

Here in cycle the strife of death into triumphal life, wheeled psychodrama

Which underpins all things sacred or profane, the mind’s main, colourless as propane

Yet seen dayplain some spirit of antient day at play in the hay unashamed

Apollo’s golden mein in righteous libra, Sol wins the day

Dogroses baying at grass blades, blades of light, blazing shafts upbraid

Sapping shadows which see beauty elapse are capped 

Lapped at by tonguing sundogs thirsty as the defrocked are for evil

On the further fringes rictus chaffinches whinging for feeding

Weaned on worms teased from the green, that firmament below, between

Flaming seed below and flaming seed above, a dove recoming after its lover

In the high reaches of branch-bridging trees, leafs and sprigs, three leafed or four

Clover beloved by bees in the cleaved treestumps

Bubosed with seed as in 1347, inclined towards heaven

Even the chaff here is prized, fetching above market price

Something in the land defies a seed not to rise skyward.