Fried Kudzu


All the trees are dressed
Pelaw and Fellgate pass in a flurry of blossoms and verdant fields,
lush hedgerows 
and a sudden green overwhelming of street lights with foliage.

In the Carolinas the kudzu at this time of year would
wantonly climb pylons
snaking out onto electric wires like tightrope walkers
in their desperation to reach and strive upwards and onwards.

Self-destructing strangle-vines.

The very thing they are best at
asphyxiating
has ended up being the petard by which they are hung.
Unstoppable in their headlong shoot to doom.
Path to annihilation.

Perhaps they hope to take out the whole of Marvin or Waxhaw
with their last strangling gasp
before they are fried and frazzled by Duke Electric.



Images wiki commons: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division 1980
tepegraph poles 1922 Newberry south carolina
ca. 1922 - ca. 1953) Title Newberry County, South Carolina. Kudzu being planted on unproductive land 



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