‘Symphoricarpos: Ode to shrub invasion’

By Fiona Mc Shane

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Common snowberry, billy buster

my mother cracked them down her brothers’ backs

all seven of them, tumbling down the dirt roads

grass pushing its way through the middle of hasty tarmac

catching them when they fell,

scrambling away from the bursting of the berries

the perennial opening, springtime play

and when she dropped them in the stream

the fish were stunned, gills flapping closed

belly up in the sun. Symphoricarpos is resilient

soil-hardy, doesn’t discriminate between loam and sand

but now is reaching for grassland, pushing out of ditches

and into fields, out of reach

of grubby schoolgirl hands.