Reclamation

 The farmlands are mostly gone now, paved

over, plowed under, transformed by tar

and girded by concrete and order.

But there, on the curve of the cul-de-sac,

the wild creeps in.

Mansions consume large lots, sport

cultured lawns awash with weed killer

that seeps and runs and strangles the native

flowers, but deep within the curated grass,

the wild creeps in.

The wooded groves, the prairie fields struggle

to retain purchase amid the plats with throwback

names: Settler’s Walk, Quaker Oaks, Woodland

Greens, the alluvial soil subsumed by swing sets

and trampolines. But here along the fence line,

the wild creeps in.

You hear it most at sunset, when the sky turns mauve

and the teasels toss their heads. The chitter

of a chipmunk’s run. The swoosh of owlish wings.

Baby skunks blunder into window wells.

Bears den in crawlspaces.

Coyotes sing under the midnight moon.

A black snake curls around the water barrel.

In the front flowerbed, the milkweed rises,

a monument to takeback, a finger in the eye

of the desperate march to subjugate, to fill

the destiny manifest in halls of state. Geese

honk at the blasphemy, pheasants chortle,

and in the cemetery at sundown, deer

hold congress with the spirits of the past.

Sparrows take a dirt bath in the bare spaces

beneath the limbs of trees. Slow and steady,

the wild creeps in.

Published in the Edith Chase anthology Our Natural Cities 2026