In Defense of Trespassing

Vincent Hostak

April 16, 2023

“Then ask not wherefore, here, alone…” William Wordsworth

Why not here

where they strung the braided wire, stacked the stones,

made a trough an imaginary boundary

between you and me and everything?

They colonized your body,

informed your many habit loops,

trained the land to produce on demand.

Come here by the old limekilns draped in kudzu,

the weed teased, buckling black-topped airstrip.

Make tracks with me in the fairway’s unstained snow.

I beg you, be impish once or twice,

or for an entire lifetime.

Why not ply the cords,

risk the barbs and staddle over to the lea?

I’ve rehearsed my defense a hundred times,

you may use it also:

“The sign uses the Old French word.

I don’t speak it.”

Or, like Woody said:

“The other side didn’t say nothing.”

Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.