Blackland Prairie Prayer

by Arthur Maruyama, on persistence

We meet in the forest on Fridays
Four volunteers and an ecologist,
our mission simple:
bring back forty acres of Blackland,
to turn these sturdy towers back
into seas of rolling grasses burning
under that flowered Texan forever-breeze
of which less than one percent remains today

There is some violence in a revival
Our hands less capable than the
hands and hooves before us,
We start by pulling privet in the fall
ever-green leaves an easy mark against
their sighing brown surroundings.
Start learning the leaves of other enemies
in the springtime, readying shovels
as they burst from the earth
Scabiosa, Johnson grass, bastard cabbage
When absolutely necessary, cauterize
cut hydra heads with herbicides

and I am getting good with the chainsaw -
that tool of my enemies, now defanged
we whip metal teeth through trees
and haul their bodies up the hill
try to not count the rings
try to not count those standing
in our path still
before we can stretch the sunlight down,
down to rouse the slumbering seedbed below

Some spring, years from now
our mouths will be filled with the names
of the ones we fought to say -
Hello, bluestems, liatris, rattlesnake master,
oh, it's going to be a long time yet
we are just the newest hands in
a bucket brigade years long
with years to go.
Return next week
and pull and spray and saw and pray -
               come back -
we won't let you die here
                         come back -
take your time coming home, but
                                   come back -
we're setting the table for you and
we're placing bricks again
where your house used to be
and the door is open