wellbeing – Writers Resist

Invasives

By Danita Dodson

Better the autumn olive growing wild, the kudzu dragging
barns back into earth, the honeysuckle choking
fenceposts—than the fever of a nation shuttering its gates to
human dreams. Better the Johnson grass towering over
barbed wire, the Hungarian brome in ditches, the Nepalese
browntop flaring through fallow fields—than the metal
mouths of B-2s dropped by a madman. Better the red fire
ants swarming, the hairy-tailed mole tunneling beneath the
garden, the sirex woodwasp needling into oaks—than the
muzzling of laughter that once lit living rooms. Better the
foul-sweet blossoms of the Bradford pear, the empress tree
with its fake royalty, the tree of heaven cracking
foundations—than the boots on the ground overtaking cities.
Better the deadnettle carpeting lawns, the spotted knapweed
sprawling, the Chinese lespedeza colonizing
roadsides—than the gerrymandered erasure of communities.
Better the ornamental burning bush gone rogue, the winter
creeper winding tight, the gall wasp swelling branches—than
the whitewashing of history in national museums. Better the
starling’s dark flash at dusk, the gecko skittering glass, the
Cuban treefrog calling from a drain—than the children
counting bodies instead of stars. Let the marmorated stink
bug clatter at window-screens. Let the spotted-wing
drosophila turn sweet fruit sour. Let the fire ant decapitating
fly do its clean work. I will not spend time and money on
pesticides. There are far more critical plagues to name, to
fight, to root out.

Danita Dodson is an educator, literary scholar, and the author of three poetry
collections, Trailing the Azimuth (2021), The Medicine Woods (2022), and Between
Gone and Everlasting (2024), all published by Wipf and Stock. Her poems have
appeared in Salvation South, Tennessee Voices, Braided Way, Women Speak,
Untelling, and elsewhere. She is a native of the Cumberland Gap region of East
Tennessee, where she hikes and explores local history connected to the wilderness. For
more, visit www.danitadodson.com.

Photo credit: Neal Wellons via a Creative Commons license.

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Flying Free

By Marc Audet

Lake Whitney shivers as the winter wind descends upon us from the Canadian Arctic. I pause my walk and search for the Canada Geese that visit these waters. They are back this morning, floating some distance away in composed tranquility, hardly noticing me. To think that they dare to cross our northern frontier in contempt of our politics, mocking our insolence to even suggest that we could tell them what to do. They care not for borders, more concerned about that sheet of ice that formed overnight, nudging them to seek shelter in the warmer waters nearer shore, by the clustered rushes where last spring, I saw a mating pair of swans nesting. On this frigid morning, I rest my spirit from the over repeated news cycle and take solace in the calmness of the lakeview before me. The geese are content to wait in the shallows for the seasons to turn. We are creatures less patient, our collective angst seething. We ache to scream, to be heard over sound bites of prevarication, to spread wings and be free again.

Marc Audet lives near New Haven, Connecticut, where he is self-employed as a web application developer. He has traveled and lived in Canada, England, France, and Ireland. His short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Across the Margin, Flash Fiction Magazine, Uppagus, Rappahannock Review, The Prose Poem, The Gilded Weathervane, and elsewhere.

Photo credit: Tim Rains via a Creative Commons license.

A Note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist on our Give a Sawbuck page.