Verdant
An edited version of a submission to the A3 Review last year. Image of kudzu by Katie Ashdown.
The kudzu blanketed the town overnight, covering all that had been.
They ran. Fled from their homes while vines and moss supplanted.
Using the tools of their predecessors doors were entered, walls painted, windows broken.
Within the deep thickets of lush vegetation life began again,
Audacity and elegance in organic symbiosis.
Hatch woven plains rising and falling over the ghostly foundations of man.
Trunks and roots a tangled epiphany of celebrated existence.
Blossom blooms vivid and rich, springs and dances
While fruit and seed drop like stones flung to the bed below
Where it is musty, dark, warm. Verdant in its very nature.
The ancient hum of earthly pastures, older than any known treasures.
More beautiful than anything known or to be known,
And no eyes would return to witness.
© Nicholas J. Parr, 2016
