Section LXXV. from Asylum: A Personal, Historical, Natural Inquiry in 103 Lyric Sections

By Jill Bialosky

Because vines glue to the tree’s
trunk & climb up to the highest coronary,
& like a thick umbilical cord snake down its bark
like a slither in a manifest garden,
until they eventually strangle the life
cell by cell, leaf by leaf, stripping its greenery,
limb by limb, compressing
the cambium’s vascular system—
until the trunk, a hollow
totem of itself.
We’ve watched
the transformation,
from our deck,
season after season,
year after year,
debating whether
to take down one, to protect
the other, the puzzle
of not knowing
which will prosper & which will fail—
& the forever mystery of why, whereas some vines, for instance,
transform over time to birth a healthy sapling,
while others are souls which quit the case it tore itself from,
whose seeds cast into the wind & higgledy-piggledy
shoot up for the harpies to feed themselves upon.

See All Poems