My Neighbor’s Bamboo

waves to her and whispers
while she suns and tunes out
the argument nextdoor. It hides her 
like a small lost city. In it, 
the wind sounds like money
or silk, depending
on her dream.  

                        The committee
wants to pull it up, dig those
fisted roots and all
two feet deep of tendrils.
Grind it. Poison. Everyone’s 
got it, everyone’s complaining,
shoots shoving up through earth 
sixty feet away, fence and flagstone 
pushed aside, the restless body
unburying.

                   It helps her 
not to see. Rain runs 
from leaf to leaf to leaf, 
miraculous endless waterfalls 
feeding the rivers 
she knows are living
under her feet.

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Amy Miller’s writing has appeared in Barrow Street, Gulf Coast, SWWIM, Tupelo Quarterly, Willow Springs, and ZYZZYVA. Her poetry collection The Trouble with New England Girls won the Louis Award from Concrete Wolf Press. She lives in Oregon, where she works for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and is the poetry editor of the NPR listening guide Jefferson Journal. She blogs at writers-island.blogspot.com.