This poem is the winner of Plough’s 2024 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award.

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but   poison ivy
along its shoulders, hunched into fields, once stripped, clear
back when the Black Angus herd intervened;
sold off to cover a single semester of college tuition,
their rasps of papillate tongues became meat, sliced
in rasping bawls, no longer licking

all those leaves of three, let them be
in the lane, witness the itch, down deep green
the gloss of encroachment on hallowed ground
in fricatives vining, chafing up every tree,
every gasping gap of old fenceline, edging the lane
to a climax, choking

the blackberry canes that used to be
in the lane, where we lapped
all the summers’ juices, lavished
for us to grow and sing, young glistening things
facing the fall and cull, another year older, we’d run
that quarter mile stretch to catch the school bus, slick

potholes to dodge in the lane, the grey mist before day,
while the cows would wake and aggregate, round
flanks and eyes shining, dark as blackberries,
to curtail the poison ivy, close-cropped;
later, quietly ruminate the cud—
so tender the release

Image from the Metropolitan Museum, The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick. Used by permission.