“The previous 3 owners of this house
all tried getting rid of that thing,
and it always came back.”
My neighbor,
the retired, dog-walking
patriarch-overseer of the block,
took a long drag
on his cigarette.
“Good luck.”
He and his
emaciated guinea pig
sauntered off,
“I told you so”
preloading in their swagger.
The knowledge that I had to
oust not only the bush
but their smugness as well
was a splint
to my resolve.
Despite its rich purple blossoms,
the wisteria had to go;
it wouldn’t let go
of its malicious quests
to reach, entangle, and pull down
2 edges of the chain link fence
and to grow pods
that gave my daughter hives.
I resorted to adopting
almost every piece of advice
from well-meaning backyard horticulturalists:
“cut off all the branches first”
“salt the stump”
“chop it into chunks”
“tear out all the tendril roots”
“burn it”
Waiting weeks between each method
and watching it grow back repeatedly
worried me into desperate action,
a crater eventually adorning
that corner of our backyard.
The smugness became mine
whenever guinea pig walked by
(at least once the grass grew back).
And then August came
when like a hydra
7 sinuous heads surfaced,
outpacing the grass,
groping for supremacy
of their former domain.
I guess I missed some tendrils.
Like Hercules,
I pushed a swiftly swinging sword,
decapitating with tentative relish,
wondering if my fate would be more like
Sisyphus’
in future seasons.
Sure enough,
every summer,
the wisteria asserts
it is alive,
and occupant number 5
weighs heavily on my mind.
