by T.C Leonard

Created on: August 29, 2009

"Multiflora Rose"

Under nature's canopy

I trod throughout my youth

Found God in feathered minstrels,

And a love of life and truth

The paths wove 'round the mountain,

And I traveled them with ease,

Chasing squirrel, deer, and rabbits

In a sultry autumn breeze

But sometime in my teenage years

The loggers came and went-

They took only twenty acres,

But my paradise was spent

A small clear-cut, above the stream,

Invited in the sun,

And next came multiflora rose

Before the year was done

It spread into the valley,

Then it scaled the highest hill-

It slammed the door into the woods

And moved in for the kill

The paths filled in with thorny weeds,

Tearing unprotected skin,

But these external problems

Cannot match the ones within

Some twenty years have passed me by,

But little good has passed

And the brambles? Just a metaphor

That childhood dreams don't last

And disrespecting nature

Is man's gesture, I suppose,

That invites the woodland cancer

Known as multiflora rose

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