Japan invades. Far Eastern vines
run from the clay banks they are
Supposed to keep from eroding.
Up telephone poles,
Which rear, half out of leafage
As though they would shriek,
Like things smothered by their own
Green, mindless, unkillable ghosts.
In Georgia, the legend says
That you must close your windows
At night to keep it out of the house.
Vines had begun to take on the character of the antagonist in a morality tale. They had become the snake in the Garden of Eden -- which is approximately the role they play in your own back yard.
Let's see, there's English ivy scaling the magnolia, honeysuckle hitching onto the holly, more honeysuckle camouflaging a cinder-block retaining wall that looks like the blunt work of a do-it-yourself mason, porcelainberry claiming the garage, and mysterious wisteria in the side yard, creeping through the ivy, reconnoitering the woodpile.
It's not your fault. But now it's your problem.
The ivy resists, seems glued to the trunk, fastened by thousands of tiny roots. You have to stick a screwdriver between the vines and the bark to get a finger around the vines. Then they pull easily. Near the base of the trunk, where the vines are thickest, the magnolia bark is soft and moist where it has been covered: the beginning of rot. You try to uproot the ivy, but you aren't strong enough. You settle for clipping the vines at the bottom, then pulling the encircling ivy mat a few feet away from the base of the tree.
Slender honeysuckle shafts twine through the lower holly branches. You try to unwrap them but you can't. You yank and only end up breaking the holly branches. You leave the honeysuckle tops hanging from the limbs, unplugged, at least, from their roots. The roots you can't find. They're hiding in the ivy.
The honeysuckle decorating the cinder blocks is relatively easy. The ancient bleached and peeling vines are thicker than a garden hose and you cut them near the ground and fill three 30-gallon bags with blooming tangle.
Then you notice that runners from the honeysuckle have joined the porcelainberry attacking the garage. Most of that green drapery comes down easily, though you can't get to the roots of the porcelainberry, deeply hidden, regenerating. And you can't get at the vines coming over the back of the garage because they emerge from a thicket of vines, trees and the neighbor's metal fence that you haven't determined how to penetrate yet. (You have a life besides this.) You can't simply climb atop the garage because it is about to fall down, under the twin forces of rot and vine.
The wisteria runners emerge from the ivy, scale a rail fence, and, hovering about four feet above the ground and parallel to it, explore the void between the woodpile and the house. You think of an experiment. You erect a rake handle among the wisteria scouts. Will they grab it?
A few days later, they haven't taken the bait. The vines seem to have ignored the rake and extended closer to the house.
You look at the dull gray wall where the blossoming honeysuckle used to be. It looked better covered with honeysuckle.
You look back at the wisteria scouts, wagging back and forth in a slight breeze, probing space with wisteria intelligence, and wonder how all this will end.
