English Vines - John Vanderslice

Into the garden of our new house

Our neighbor’s English vines

Tunneled under a retaining wall

Not equal to containing all

The debris of a cracked couple

Growing sicker and sicker

By night our neighbors' invading vines

Rooted into my dreams from underground

Twined their nooses around our lives

Branching out manically

They choked our sycamore

And grew thicker and thicker

And when I finally scaled their fence

To kill the source of this malevolence

Were my neighbors watching me

From their house I hacked away?

But vines like these root too deep to kill

We keep our blinds closed now forever