Wild Strawberries
He always leaves those crimson wild
strawberries untouched.
Alone they watch unscathed the frantic perennial
onslaughts
beneath serrated sage canopies. Bright fire-brick
fruit;
could almost be taken for a poor man’s nettles,
but produce
no bladed hair, pack no stinging venom to wound
if clutched,
petite beetroot red, tongue taste-budded sweet,
hardy wrought,
bent from tougher stuff, strewn out from strong
foundations,
spread scattered, untamed pearl flower petals,
fast and loose.
He battles thrusting choking brambles, spiked
blackthorns,
creepered ivy invasions. Bayoneting blindly
with toxic skewers,
they scale garden fence in noxious incursion,
wave after wave
of peaked plunging descent, interminably breach
his defences,
rally roundly broadleaf troops, hiss clarion
calls over wort-horns,
throttle-smother with bindweed the one
strawberry fewer.
And sick spiny leaves, sunken, shove up, crack concrete
pave,
grind out heart shaped leaves, flower a gaudy
toxic pretence,
brittle thistle bridgeheads in purple crowned
lies, willow herb
false-over weeping for the jilted, fallen
comrades in arms.
Thrashing the strimmer brutal scythes, in green
blood bathes,
drips in mock screamery while they survive in
perpetual offense.
But see here, in retreated defeat, besieged yet
quiet in calm,
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