what we build, buckles
By Scott-Patrick Mitchell
Published 1 January 2021
scrub succumbs, is scrubbed gone
. encroaching like cockroaches re
-fuse to die, we grout clean a line
. the periphery shines as we fence
off snaked sand, thorned meadow
, bush land: beyond our boundary
, plants native to it plot belligerent
thoughts against reserve & park
...they wanna take
back the disappearing they once
had
, make bitumen bleed bulbs like
streetlamps
. awning, undo. cement, soften
, unglue. brick, breath back into
the fold of being a wall before
there was no wall there at all
. grow ground anew & let dirt
be itself...complete...content
...magnificently askew
. the contents
that exist at these coordinates need
to come down from the plans our
architects & cities imagined: what
we build spends too much time as
what we built
. it never plans
. upend like sand thrusts with lust up
through the cracks, scrubs out in gaps
, nestled plants in the wet breath pant
in the space between city & sea: all
else fails exquisitely, you know ocean
wins, every time, if given half a chance