Thirty Years’ Creeper War

Into its roots I thrust my spade,
each spring, to kill it where it cloaks
and climbs my lovely house, and chokes
all other green things there arrayed.
With my bare hands I pull new shoots
before they batten and start to braid
themselves into a wild cascade.
I never manage to kill the roots.

I lay thick fabric on the yard
to snuff the beast, but my crusade
founders: no earthly barricade
will work. Old errors—they die hard:
I planted this plague decades past,
so casually, and am now betrayed
by its propensity to last.
It’s not the worst choice I have made.