Tricia Knoll

Ground Truth

My new neighbor believes in surveys, pink tapes
on a bramble I thought was mine. Where I’ve pulled
a thousand blackthorn babies to make room
for native forest – ramps, red maple,
Virginia creeper, sumac and chokeberry.

The rock wall is his. Barbed wire
hanging from a fencepost is mine. So too,
morels, from cooled earth,
timed to erupt when oak leaves emerge
as big as a mouse ear. My morels.

He doesn’t see them. Or the daffodils.
I tell him what he thought were peonies
just stabbing out
are hostas, even as I know
his deceased wife loved peonies.
Did I ruin his memories? His delusions?

I keep secrets. Where the garter snakes hide
In the rock ledge, where turkeys stir up dust bowls
in dry heat, ephemerals the forest offers
after snow melt, proliferation
of trout lilies.

He’s planting peonies and loves the yard art
of his rotating blades, must hear my temple bell
ringing to the bobcat, the coyote, the squirrels,
the owls and ravens crossing. No attention
to dotted lines.

Tricia Knoll often dreams of flying but is content to live in the deep forests of Vermont. Her work appears widely in journals and anthologies. She is a Contributing Editor to Verse Virtual. Website: triciaknoll.com