Our neat and tidy industry of green—
landscaped lawns and overseeding,
my father’s father’s plots of land all
muscled into beauty. The golden mean
an imitation of what wanders freely—
roots’ rebellion underground,
mycelium’s opaque tendons stringing
tall things—oak and tamarack—into being.
The corset of fescue comes undone.
Yards blossom into bee balm by the river
that floods its banks, pushing its limits,
pushing back.
Slow to sense the coming
tide, the rise, the random
flairs of rebellion, we split
like concrete.
—
Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes, lives, and caregives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada). Find her work in American Literary Review, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and The New Quarterly. She’s won some awards (2024 RBC-PEN Canada New Voices Award) and a gazillion rejections. She keeps writing.
