Wisteria
for Patrick Norman
I could write solely about death.
I could write solely about agony
and misfortune.
But how can I write about these, and not
about that, wisteria; how before
the catastrophic storm hit, it was filled
with hundreds of grapish blossoms—
Oh how they hung!
After six or seven hours of being whipped
to shreds—of being gnawed
down
to a stub—completely destroyed—
to what appeared to be the point of no return,
it came back up, zealous, as to show—
no matter how ripped
and torn
our lives have been,
or how troubled
they may be—
what gets us up, and going again,
is what runs
deep.
Like its thousand roots, webbing long—
and long—
into the hard soil.
AHREND TORREY Enjoys exploring nature in southern Louisiana where he lives with his husband Jonathan, their two rat terriers Dichter and Dova, and Purl their cat. He is the author of Bird City, American Eye forthcoming from Pinyon Publishing in 2022, and Small Blue Harbor published by the Poetry
Box Select imprint in 2019. His work has appeared in The Greensboro Review, The Perch (a journal of the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, a program of the Yale School of Medicine) and West Trade Review, among others. He earned his MA/ MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and is a recipient of the Etruscan Prize awarded by Etruscan Press.
