Immigrant Graffiti

Eucalyptus rewrites the land 
with its cough drop odor and poisonous oils--
planted on barren dunes, wood 
meant for sleepers for train rails 
bringing America to California 
and its fields of gold. Redwoods 
gone to boards and fences 
and in the broken forests

immigrant seeds sowed themselves: 
pampas grass, tree-of-heaven, creeping fig.
on the roadway verges each spring 
masses of pale blue forget-me-nots: 
a cheerful sea but Grace hated 
the tiny flowers, her litany--
cape ivy, ice plant and broom—
all alien invaders to be destroyed
before they crowd out lupines, California lilac
and mission blue butterflies.

Blues always pleasing to the human eye
but not interchangeable to Grace.
California, where Spanish Padres 
scribbled saints across the land,
taught Miwok and Ohlone 
how the land and the body 
which had belonged only to itself 
could be re-named as property.

Sold or taken by immigrant hordes looking
for gold, for timber, for a place to grow
oranges and children, pushing out wolf 
and bear in a graffiti of change across the land.
Grace has gone to ash in the sea, but I do not sow 
forget-me-nots in the garden I say is mine.

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 Catharine Clark-Sayles is a retired physician living north of San Francisco. She completed an MFA in poetry and narrative medicine in 2019 after an efficiency expert told her to spend less time talking to her patients and more time on the computer. She has four books of poetry "One Breath" and "Lifeboat" published by Tebot Bach Press, "Brats" (a chapbook) published by Finishing Line Press and "The Telling, The Listening" published in 2023 by Saint Julian Press.