Serpentine Barrens
I pass through archipelagos of autumn light,
A forest enclosed by croplands and pasture,
Unlike anything for a thousand miles,
A stranded barren, broken from earth’s mantle,
Badlands, an oasis of odd flora,
A realm not only dissimilar, but utterly so,
Impossible to tame, strange splotch on a map,
Pocked with chromite, quarried for feldspar,
Outcrops of pitch pine and prairie bluestem,
Flourishing because stronger strains can’t grow,
Savannah so strange here, auburn acres of it,
Upland arc of fame-flower, whorled milkweed,
Thriving apart in soil so acidic it kills the rest,
So like ourselves, who eke out lives unliked
By those who cannot cultivate us,
Thriving apart to survive in the waste,
Living as we do because the others won’t,
Lyre-leaved rock-cress and wheels of aster.
*
Ernest Hilbert is the author of the poetry collections Sixty Sonnets, All of You on the Good Earth, Caligulan—selected as winner of the 2017 Poets’ Prize—Last One Out, and Storm Swimmer, winner of the 2022 Vassar Miller Prize. He works as a rare book dealer in Philadelphia. Visit him at ernesthilbert.com
