Adapt

A cat stalks the porch, just to check out my dry food.
Not good enough—being bored, he taste-tests but leaves
To stalk blackbirds. Bet you he won’t catch one though,
Unless it’s very sick, a burden, on the brink of death,
Its broken wing no good for its tribe, thick as storm-clouds
Or almost tactile plague over that wind-blasted maple.

In the cracks of my unsightly marble-brick- concrete patio,
Thrusts one coarsened grass stalk, one saw-toothed leaf,
And maybe something radial or almost tropical-looking
Or spiny thus exotic shudders also from the cracking grout,
Something feeding on dislodged concrete and shavings
Much as saplings of white birch drink from those cliff-sides
Road- crews blast through the hill-slope for the interstate.

Whenever the cats don’t stalk the neighboring plot
A mother-skunk snorkels through the hay-waves.
She is foraging for grubs or burrowing mammals.
The cats prefer live game to dry food in a bowl
But being house-cats, they don’t catch too much,
Although neither do they care for my dry offerings
That spoil in rain, bleeding like kid’s cereal in milk.

Each sapling that hangs from each vertical face of shale
Sends a trunk into the air nearly vertical as the cliff
sustaining it, many taproots prizing many cracks,
Fumbling soil moistened by runoff or a spring’s leeching,
Saplings that are everywhere every Federal highway is.
But whatever tells that sapling not to grow more, its source
Of soil and water spent? Stunted growth assures survival,
Thus no shattered cliff-side, no roots among rubble.

Thicker trunks or longer taproots take the cliff-side with them,
Finish a job begun with dynamite and Caterpillars.
Against this outcome weeds don’t grow so high the patio
Splits and the grass-stalk doesn’t spend itself in fissures
That break apart the masonry and dislodge more weeds
Into other rearrangements of stone that fracture already
As do demolished buildings or abandoned industrial sites
That rainwater enriched with ferrochemicals saturates

While the quicksilver of the mirror or looking-glass
Pools for opportunities through which to sink
Through buckling concrete honeycombed into offices,
Their rolodexes dumped, their files empty, empty the sockets:
Note the steady unfailing adaptation to circumstance
Of cat’s paw, weed. Note a dwarf tree’s cautious taproot.