"Kudzu" and "Retreat"
Kudzu
Miles of trees and bushes along Pilani
Highway in Maui are smothered
with Kudzu until the landscape
has completely changed and lost
its diversity, each leaf similar,
the size and shape of bushes
crushed beneath its tentacles,
the way slogans have become magnets
for our emotions, bringing together
the fear, insecurity, and anger
that pervades us, strangling
the landscape of our daily lives,
facts that could reveal the diversity
of our voices, and uncover the hidden
machinations beneath the never
ending slogans that bombard us.
Retreat
Entering a forest
is a retreat from the loud
voices that create division
with their endless carping.
Here time is a continual
becoming that enfolds us
and draws us in, a quiet filled
with silent music, the wind
t hat becomes a chorus
of branches bending towards
each other, tender shoots
growing out of dead tree trunks.
Here, death has a different
meaning for it is an important
part of the creation, showing us
how the forest is a holy book
that calls out to our souls,
the depths of our being.
Besides writing books, Marguerite Guzman Bouvard has spent her life volunteering on behalf of social justice. She has been writing to a black prisoner in Lincoln Nebraska, helping him with his poetry, and has published a chapbook of his work called Soul Songs. We need to know that our prisons are filled with mostly black and Latino prisoners, many of whom made only minor offenses. Her new poetry book is Shades of Meaning and she is working on a non-fiction book, Climate Visionaries Around the World. She will have a new poetry book coming out in 2023. Marguerite supports the Mississippi Center for Justice.
