I regret not attacking the ivy sooner.
The roses would have thanked me
because maybe they would have bloomed at all.
It was half ignorance—ivy is pretty enough—
and half negligence as it spread greedily over
everything, cutting all off from the sun.
This afternoon found me ruthlessly pulling
and pulling in the dirt, each time grabbing
stemmy, networked vines all holding onto the earth with many hands.
As I neared the fence, I found a thick root that corkscrewed
deep into the ground at a difficult angle to reach,
for the fence, as I said, was nearly on top of it.
As I worked at it with fork and trowel
many metaphors struck me, all about sin
and how it grows unchecked: demanding hedgemony.
I couldn't get to the bottom of the root.
I knew my constraints would not allow it,
not today, probably not ever.
The tattered ends I could not see would eat and grow.
Perhaps ivy is sin.
Shall we now abandon that line and turn our thoughts to love?
If the ivy is love, then all you have invested in your child's life,
all the relationships you cared about, no matter how they ended,
all the smiles, money, agreements, promises that have been broken off
and you now no longer see,
have a root so deep that earthly instruments cannot remove it.
A few seasons from now will prove that love is no fragile flower bud.
You may not be there to see it.
But there it will be, growing.
