Bellingham skirmish   Morning glory creeps from alley, buttercup close behind. Out front, I try to stem anemone’s attempt — take over the entire yard.   Already, queen-of-the-prairie rules the west, peace lilies, roots tangled, dense, lay claim to soil below the trellis,   where kiwi battle grape. Not to be outdone, family-cousin day lily is busy to the south, crowding out chard, arugula, peas. None dare   steal north — massive sword ferns shiver lightless, claim ownership of shadows, along with ally, moss. Shovel, hoe in hand,   I resist, alone, withstand blitz, serpentine horde of green intent on choking everything. July, my hope, shorter days,   chance to reach October — less time to pull, dig, rip, more to stop, wipe brow, sip from hose, see the beauty, drink in all this.

Timothy Pilgrim, a native of Montana and retired university journalism professor living in Bellingham, Wash., is a Pacific Northwest poet and 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee. His poems have been accepted more than 500 times by journals such as Toasted Cheese, Mad Swirl, Cirque, Santa Ana River Review, Windsor Review, Hobart, Otoliths and Prole Press in the U.S. Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. He is the author of Mapping water and Seduced by metaphor: Timothy Pilgrim collected published poems, which the back cover calls “a 10 on any Richter imagination scale.”