The Greek mint has begun its ruckus again in the backyard.
I have tried to teach it to lower its voice, but it has paid no heed.

A Japanese maple, Rose of Sharon tree and a flash of flowering bushes,
while maintaining social distance, have been cringing but tolerant.

The cedar board deck, aged and grayed by its years, yet handsome
and commanding, serves as a mute border to the proliferating garden growth

that is really, admittedly, the hub of color-swirl and herbal takeover
there. A copper wind sculpture, faded green and with its double helix

patterns formed by the gratis compliment of wind on a spectrum
from low—high, can only co-exist, a metal figurine to be toyed with

by the weather, subservient but oh, so enduring and statuesque. And
all the while, the aggressive Greek mint’s roots wrestle with its

adjoining herbal brothers and sisters, and won’t allow for a
three-count during its battle for soil nutrients, fierce

and ruthless like Achilles conquering Hector there in my
suburban garden, a veritable Troy to that race of one

undeniably aromatic, Greek herb, its only heel being
vulnerable to the trowel shelved and waiting in the garage.

Word in my house is that its fate will be not death,
but solitary confinement in a yard pot in a remote, distaff

section of the rock ecosphere there.


© by Stephen Anderson
Used with author’s permission