Bittersweet

First snowfall of the season, mid-January
Out the window a catastrophe of white
Rumors of war mar early year innocence 
Stolen in mud and the sun on a Sunday afternoon in the woods

The women marched out of the woods as we were walking in
with clippers and wheelbarrows
Official orange vests, humming over sudden walls laid bare to 
Even more graffiti 

“We are the Burning Bush Brigade” they announce, prophets of pruning, a neighborhood watch for invasive species 
Saving the woods for native lady slippers

Saving the woods, perhaps, but exposing history to time
I scan the wily branches with my phone and ask the satellites what I am looking for
“Oriental Bittersweet”
The modern oracle proclaims

This familiar ruin first glimpsed under a full moon summer
Flush with story and starry eyes
Following a boy with honey in a bear-shaped bottle
To bring offerings to a broken statue of Pan
On the overgrown grounds of a mansion that burned down years ago

Walking into that woods
That open clearing where the farmhouse stood on the other side of 
History between us and this
Mist-drenched Narnia where surely Aslan’s animal army lay

This sacred place
Where the dog-walkers circle the lake in the sun, ignorant of our night wanderings
The lake that once bore ice prized by the Queen of England

Where a vine as thick as a man’s fist thrusts through the center 
Of a concrete column dangling over my head lolling like the neck
Of a hanged thief 30 feet up in the air

Someone once told me that where the branches were twisted,
Where the vines were too thick and the air crackled under the fingertips
The fae were near

I would cleave a piece of that twisted wood as long as my forearm 
To make a witch’s wand
A piece of nature not even stained just sanded down to the grain
And lovingly rubbed with linseed oil while Krishna Das played on the TV

“The Grapevine sleeps”
The Grapevine creeps”
The Grapevine leaps”

Or so she said, and she knew far more than I
Able to rub stones and start fires, make friction from wood and patience

Of course she would know the name of the wand that chose the witch
Grapevine, blessed by Dionysus and Shiva in the liminal woods 
Only years later did the plant app yield another name

I investigate while my husband prowls the exposed foundations for more 1930’s junk
This plant’s real name is a rap sheet
Growing 60 feet long, strangling trees like a boa constrictor
To leave its wavy wizard staff carvings everywhere

It can engulf empires, growing a mile a minute
Invading open fields, impossible to control

How do you solve a problem as wily as a weed
refusing to be uprooted
Do you bring poison to where the waters are historically pristine?
Brought here as a decoration, now illegal in the state
Escaping the bounds of domesticity

For years we’ve taken home this place- the wand, the maypole, 
A wrought-iron fence, blunted into a fire poker by drunks at a bonfire
Lovingly rubbed down with alcohol and stabilized with shellac, a conversation piece
Of history that will never be missed

I have made an artifact out of an invasion
Made magic out of an unwanted immigrant, forged in story
Shapeshifting in my hand, bittersweet
Capricious as technology and time, re-named
A spotted corn snake, a speck of green wood fungus
Festooned with silver bells, calling the half-forgotten gods to dance