DOUG VAN HOOSER

WILD PHLOX

daylilies box with the phlox

a wild flower that won’t be tamed or broken

champion puncher that showers

relentless jabs of volunteer seed

that impregnate every crack crevice

and cranium of earth

I succumb to the blue bounteous smiles

let them swamp the garden

and wait until the bees are through rappelling

bloom to bloom

before pulling on their defiance

their roots strangle all reason

have to be evicted by shovel

but I am assured of their return

the garden on their migration route

their spawn all ready

planted in the earth’s eddies

are reaching into the soil

searching for flaws

Doug Van Hooser’s poetry has appeared in Chariton Review, Poetry Quarterly, Gravel, and Stoneboat Literary Journal, among other publications. His fiction can be found in Red Earth Review, Crack the Spine, and The Riding Light Review. Doug is a playwright active at Three Cat Productions and Chicago Dramatists Theatre.