JUNGLESIDE
Beside the jungle he builds a house of cinderblock,
brick, steel and stone--to keep the jungle out,
which he lives beside, inside
a clearing cut from its heart, its green sweat and soup.
A colony of creepers poke their noses
to his window, a vine strangles
the chimney--to close its throat
and smoke him out. He chops
a tree's arms off, peels
back the fronds and ferns pressing huge hands
against his door. A tendril,
tentative, probes like a hunting snake,
like a fingertip, a tongue, through his keyhole.
Ripe threads ooze through cracks a breeze could not....
First he burned it, the jungle, slashed it back,
he carved from it his acre
and built a house.
To insult it he planted beans in rows.
To insult it he seeded then mowed his lawn.
He wanted the jungle to want its jungle back.
He wanted to lean his hard shoulder
against its hard shoulder.
What happened? After the ants
cleaned his skull of flesh,
a sapling grew through its left eye socket
and, as it strained for light, it lifted
his skull up, head-high, a tilt (you can see
it there, it will talk
to you) to it, a deferential nod
to the jungle, unovercome.