“You may have your mighty oaks—
Go on– listen to your whispering pines,
Tend your pretty flowers—
For I’ll outlast them all—
I can grow anywhere, any time—
Give me an inch of your ground,
And I will bury you!
I ask nothing of you, neither food nor water,
I thrive in the drought and I rest in the cold—
Next year I’ll be stronger,
My roots going deeper,
And some night I’ll creep into your room,
Plant myself over you, cover you up,
Bind you to the sheets—
My branches will grow out of your heart.”

©2008, Jack Peachum

Jack Peachum is a sometime poet and actor who lives in a haunted old manse, The Venable’s House, in Clarksville, Virginia, with many ghosts, his wife Julia and a lovely bulldog named Eleanor. Two of his poems appear in our other seasonal anthologies: “Virginia in Spring” in the spring collection and “Our Pierrot in Autumn” in the fall collection.

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