Invasive

Will Carpenter

The cornfield across Lower Marlboro Road is growing

a house with six bedrooms, a new-barn-red

shed, and some exotic grass that shouldn’t quite

sprout in these parts. I wonder how

the new spa down the road could spare

the clay, and whether the nail parlor is jealous

of the manicured lawn. The seller has gone

to Florida, made decades of cash and broken

camp—local corn isn’t what it used to be.

On our side of the road, a bungalow hold-out,

blowup plastic pool and rust-rotten oil drum

in the backyard, nudges the fourth green

of a pasture-turned-airfield-turned golf course.

The owner still keeps goats to trim the rough

and we round them up when they escape. He’s like us –

moved here a few years ago from God-knows-where.