Devil's Beggarticks, and: If Body Is the Field, and: Equinox

Abstract: The speaker contemplates an invasive plant called Devil's Beggarticks, which has populated the banks of a suburban creek, and her own implication in the environmental changes made apparent by the plant. An ars poetica leaning into fall and winter imagery as well as text elements, such as punctuation, the poem explores the speaker's writing process during a loved one's cancer treatments. At the fall equinox, hiking in mountain ecosystems, the writer contemplates seasonal changes (and what doesn't change with seasons), while confronting recent griefs and mortality itself.