Killers by Design

by Jim Tilley

Creeping is an act of stealth, moving
slowly and carefully to avoid being
heard or noticed, a label improperly

assigned to the invasive plants rapidly
climbing trunks of trees to erect themselves,
smothering those trees’ leaves, blocking

sunlight, suppressing photosynthesis,
killers by design, somewhat like their cousins
growing uncontrollably, spreading to

other parts of the body, ultimately
choking themselves as well as their hosts,
unlike the thriving vines surviving

the trees. My mother kept pulling down
the creepers winding themselves around
the maple outside her window until

she ran out of strength. She could forgive
them for their persistence, but not the
rampant cancer that took her in the end.

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Jim Tilley has published three full-length collections of poetry and a novel with Red Hen Press. His short memoir, The Elegant Solution, was published as a Ploughshares Solo. His poem, On the Art of Patience, was selected by Billy Collins to win Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize for Poetry. Four of his poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His next poetry collection, Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe: New & Selected Poems, will be published in June 2024.