Invasive Biology

First, thanks for your patience as we wait for SAGE to come back from the printer. Thankfully, living in the nonprofit world has prepared me for troubleshooting on a budget! But really, it is AT THE PRINTER and it's not too late to pre-order a copy by emailing me here. These folks will get first dibs, hot off the presses in the next few weeks.

Last time, I wrote about how I write poems but didn't tell you that my real muse is Morning Edition on NPR right as the alarm goes off. More than a few poems have been inspired by that semi-awake state and an intriguing story on the radio. So with apologies to my friend and naturalist Liz Bradfield who will no doubt know that this image above is probably not the real English grass in the poem, here my somewhat abashed confession on this environmental conundrum.

Invasive Biology

I know I should be appalled

that English grasses are growing

in Antarctica --appalled

or at least alarmed -- how once more

humans have upended nature, bur

latched to pant leg, seed fallen

from the pages of a paperback last read

in a backyard in Surrey -- alarmed

or at least dismayed -- how tufts of green

cricket lawns dot this white island where

they decidedly do not belong -- dismayed

or at least concerned.

I should be appalled but instead I am

awed, mesmerized, uplifted -- how life

makes life wherever it finds itself,

the power of the faintest pulse.

How can I be dismayed when this is

what I want -- thaw in deep winter,

improbable color, the chance to inhale,

embed, enfold the exotic other.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt 2012