Thrasher's Call

The eviction letter of things green and growing, when it arrives in ink and dead tree, speaks of violations

as though violence has been done. Maybe it has; all those slender raised fists breaking ground

to assert nothing more than that they live here, here on this dirt that had such plants before my house

was stacked on scraped hillside, the bones of trees carving up the hundred-acre woods by halves

and I, latest heir of this subfiefdom, or maybe fief myself, who can say,

can say nothing to this letter, nothing permitted by covenants, except “acknowledged; will remove weeds.”