Bittersweet Vine
needed to be hacked
back hard
to kill its wanderings
its choking other bushes
I asked John
who mowed the lawn
to kill the vine.
he didn’t say no,
but he never did destroy it
he just mowed the lawn
in his whirlwind way
one day I ask him
again, to kill
the bittersweet.
he smiled and touched
one thick, coiling vine,
reminded me that I once
loved its red blood berries
loved them in the dead of winter
during that month of bittersweet talk
his Viet Nam mission of retrieving
the dead grew back
strangling his mind
he began plotting his death
Mary
Shay McGuire
Mary Shay McGuire was introduced to poetry in grammar school when she was given book of poetry. Poetry has been with her since then and the gift was the impetus for her beginning to write poetry. She graduated from Newton College of the Sacred Heart—now part of Boston College-- and then studied painting in Paris. Later she graduated from the Pennsylvania State University with an MFA in Writing Poetry. She has published poems in Eclectica, Vita Brevis, Literary Heist, Literary Yard and other venues and has won the Hackney Prize for Poetry and the New Millennium Prize.
Tags:
Poetry