I peer out the sunroom window
at the hydrangeas encroaching
on the arborvitae, on the camelia —
and just now in mid-November when
the tight buds of the camelia are grasping
at every bit of waning sun they can
to bloom and the arborvitae
is struggling to spread its branches;
next month they’ll be the only green in the garden.
They can’t do this by themselves.
How can I disturb the oak leaf in its
massive burgundy glory? The paniculata
with its fragile dried blossoms in tact?
The camelia has become deformed
leaning to the left, withered on the right
like a paralytic. On my hands and knees
I survey the lower branches
of the arborvitae, crush the brittle leaves.
Death creeping from the bottom up.
(I hadn’t known it was this bad.)
Like a stranger, I slay the paniculata
to a bundle of sticks, attack the oak leaf
from the rear, leaving only its two
front branches on fire in the sunlight.
Limbs are scattered all over
the lawn. I survey my work and see
that it is without grace, that I have maimed
in my haste to release the captives. And I pray
for my soul’s return in the slow and steady work.
***
Leah Johnson is a Washington, DC poet. A member of the Surrey Street Poets, her work has been published in Green Mountains Review Online, The Healing Muse, Oberon Poetry Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and Mothers Always Write. She is a 2017 Best of the Net nominee for her poem “The Goldfinch” in Beltway Poetry Quarterly. She is a co-host of the WordWorks Café Muse Literary Salon and, in previous incarnations, has been a member of the Writing Studies faculty at American University, a piano teacher, and co-founder of Dumbarton Concerts in Georgetown.
