My father-in-law-to-be mowed our yard with his tractor, transforming the tangle into a park.

My son sobbed, He killed my favorite blackberry bush.

“But there are more,” I argued. “Look, they’re all over.” He wouldn’t face where I pointed.

I wish I’d said, “It’s painful to lose what you love.”

Lois Rosen’s poetry books are Pigeons (Traprock Books 2004) and Nice and Loud (Tebot Bach 2015). She has taught ESL in Oregon, New York, Ecuador, Colombia, Japan, and Costa Rica. Lois founded the Peregrine Poets of Salem, Oregon, and leads the Trillium Writers and the Institute for Continued Learning Writing Group at Willamette University. She won Willamette Writers’ 2016 Kay Snow First Prize in Fiction.