Compass

Vegetating

I unshed shears and, 'Clack!' I sever all
bramble's prodigious invasions,
sectioning runners back to rooted stems,
hacking low as hack can.
                                                   I leave the roots,
the cunning ones, by fence and wall, some
sheathed in concrete!
                                            Now half the runners
loop back to ground. Touch base? Make base
for more re-spawning.
                                           Wiry old troopers,
their game's never over. Reaching for the road
the grizzled are, from the front yard / car port.
Flat to ground, that trick
                                                 (as those odd spiders
who sit, legs spread, on garden chairs for hours
like dead things, or cracks in plastic);

but these brambles, battle-clad, thin,
                                                                            purple-stemmed,
dense,
                mean textures to their leathern leaves,
are so unlike the aphid-pale thumb-thick
sylvan varieties,
                                 Green-manning prolifically,
flowering as they go, cloud-white, wind-creased,
some dabbed with blusher – so.
                                                                 Oh, only one
offering of rouged petals for me, here?
                                                                                  Done.
Spare that one extension, then.