Answered Prayers

“Come in; come to me, my darling.”

An emerald siren
sings to me
its tendrils beckon
across the guardrails
it curtains the trees
and overwhelms the bushes
it smothers the ground
a green sea of tangles
Medusa in the guise of a plant
shooting out runners
and self-planting stolons
a convoluted system of roots
which defy eradication
by fire or poison
growing a foot a night
sixty feet a year
it knows no enemy
it loves the South
cradling whole meadows
and thickets of oak and poplar
in its green viney arms.

It croons to me.
If I enter,
I will become
like Daphne
running from Apollo,
enchanted,
trapped forever,
in its jade folds.

You are so beautiful, Ge gen,
With your coiling, climbing, trailing vines,
And your secret royal purple blooms.

I will
Come in
And stay
A while
In your mad
Green

Teleia H. Tollison is a proud Navy wife and mother. She was educated here and there across the South. Her formative years were in Appalachia, and then she returned home with her husband when he retired. She has been a closet writer all her life.

About Answered Prayers — The poem began as a class assignment in which we found something wonderful about something we disliked intently. The result is this mandatory Kudzu poem.