Forgotten Ground Regained

Land Rites

The gleemen gloss,sing stories of ‧ the city of roses,forgetting this ground ‧ grows other worts -- a burgh of creeping ‧ buttercup too.
In hand to hand ‧ harsh battling,each root I wrench -- wrest -- from the earthseems like sinew ‧ splitting apart.I grasp -- I grapple -- a Grendel foe,and view my Heorot: a vista of lawn.Our fighting defaces ‧ its fine tapestriesas you sidestep, slipping my grasp,outdistance me ‧ with devious runners.
In Spring time I’m ‧ hamstrung Wayland.I limp from May’s ‧ lively first flushuntil August’s ‧ tide of the weeds.But in biting, baleful winterI know you’re now ‧ Nithhad, impotent.My plotted reprisals ‧ deplete your offspring
In triumph as thewy ‧ as thirty menI move to meet ‧ the mother of weedsamid cavern lair ‧ of compost heap,and joyless Sea-Hag ‧ of Japanese knotweed.
This poem was originally publilshed in Withowinde 161, p. 15, March, 2012
Copyright © Martin Vine, 2012
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