Gently Persistent

Another lesson from my garden

I only know what I observe—
the persistence of spiders,
spinning webs again and again
after I’ve removed them—again—
is a microcosm of nature,
not unlike the blackberry
or the hellish tree-of-heaven,
never in the same pattern,
appearing before I’ve noticed.

Perhaps we should all be this way
with who and what we love:
softly yielding, gently returning—
again and again.

Now if only I can take my own good advice.

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Author’s Note:

It’s amazing how this, that, and those which are the most vexing can also be the most worth learning from. It’s Spring in Oregon and the spiders have begun to come out, laying sticky trip-wires all across my deck and in the bushes where I stumble into them, sputtering as I frantically wipe them from my face or hair. Year after year, warm season after warm season, I clear them in the morning off my chairs and railing just to find them there again in the afternoon.

So too is this with that goddamn blackberry in my neighbor’s yard, producing nothing but an immense reach of thorny vines over and under my fence, slowly eating away the wood where it finds a seam to break through. I’ve cut away its overhanging canopy time and time again, asked the property owner to remove it, cursed its berries for being so tart that you’d think they’re poisonous.

And yet here it is - it remains. But not for malice, or greed, or treachery - but for its own nature. The spiders, and the blackberries, and the tree of heaven are all just doing what they do, quietly and slowly with ease. They do not announce their arrival with the roaring of trumpets or the revving of engines that startle the birds from their nests. They’re but following their gentle programming to persist and grow where there are conditions for growth.

I think of it less now as doing battle with them, and now think of it more as being in relation to them. They’re still here and I sometimes have to manage them, and sometimes I think for the best, from all that I’ve learned from them.

Now if only I can remember all of this learning when I call the neighbor about removing the invasive plants again.