Finally catching up with a National Poetry Writing Month Challenge prompt on the intended day...Today's prompt dared poets to write a villanelle that ends with a question.
(Photo from Google, which credits Gardening Know How: male and female cardinal in privet bush. Cardinals' sex roles are less strongly stereotyped than some birds'. Males are much more colorful and conspicuous, but females show some color when they want to. Males are much noisier, but both sexes sing, often in duets. They mate for life, and both parents rear the young.)
Cardinalis virginiensis, the Cardinal bird, lived in Virginia before privet (Ligustrum spp.) was introduced. But the birds became year-round residents rather than summer visitors as privet hedges became common. They are unmistakably attracted to privet berries, which most species, including humans, can't eat. Many cardinals still winter in Central America, where they eat other berries (and compete with farmers), but the birds continue to bring "cheer" and be "pretty birdies" in North America where their territory includes a privet bush that holds on to its berries until spring, or until cardinals eat them, whichever comes first. Privet does not actually spread much, nor is it difficult to control its spread from seeds and roots in your yard. What makes privet so invasive is that cardinals and a few other native birds and mice drop its seeds wherever they fly...and, where privet has spread, cardinals have followed. At one time naturalists actually used Richmondena as a name for the birds because Richmond was as far north as they would go. Now these fruit-loving, weather-tolerant birds live in New Brunswick.
Some people hate privet. They have no reason to hate it; the bushes are hardy enough to choke out some other plants but, if you'd rather have the other plants, all you have to do is cut the privet sprouts down close to the ground; the root may die right then and there, or it may oblige you by sending out another rhizome and sprouting somewhere else, and if that still doesn't suit you, you can cut those sprouts too. It's easy. Privet sprouts are slim little things you can cut with garden shears. Privet trimmings are good for toasting marshmallows over a fire; they're too sappy to ignite while a marshmallow is toasting and thin enough to dry out and burn well after the marshmallow is cooked.
Some troll even expressed a wish that Mark Gelbart would breathe deeply of privet blossoms and choke on allergic reactions. This is just pathetic. Nobody's allergic to privet blossoms. They release an intense, sweet, delicious odor for a few evenings in May and do no harm whatsoever. People who have allergy reactions in May need to investigate the "pesticides" being sprayed on nearby gardens. Lots of people have allergy-type reactions to glyphosate. Almost everybody has some respiratory system reaction to dicamba. Some other "pesticides" are known to trigger really violent coughing and sneezing fits. But a person who sneezes while passing a privet hedge is a person whose allergies, probably to chemicals, have been aggravated to the point of being "allergic to" every kind of dust and pollen on Earth; such a person should try to find a place to stay indoors and recover.
Sadly, perhaps, privet has a lifespan. Although it does not attract insect predators and the few American animals who can eat it actually propagate it, privet is vulnerable to infection by fungi and nematodes. In a hundred years or so a stand of privet is likely to die out naturally. Cardinals and other songbirds will probably keep the species alive, but not in the same place...however useful privet may be in the places where it's been planted, to control soil erosion and build up soil that can support native plants.
I love my privet hedges because, during the fifty-one weeks of each year when privet is not bearing sweet-smelling white flowers, it "blooms" with cardinals. How can anyone not love a bird that bobs around the windows, in the dead of winter, singing "Cheer! Cheer! Cheer!" Brave flying flowers, that I could gallant it like you and be as little vain...
Brave birds who nest among privet's blossoms white,
Do you spread north because of heat's increase?
Do you count humans as a boon or blight?
When winter reminds us of our life's twilight
Your calls of "cheer" and "pretty birdy" please,
Brave birds who nest among privet's blossoms white.
Other birds, including chickens, like a bite
Of privet berries dropped among plants and trees.
To you, are humans' chickens boon or blight?
I love the scent of privet's blossoms white
Mixed in with violets, roses, poplar trees,
Brave birds who spread the privet's blossoms white.
In summers when heat beats as if for spite
But no more than it's done for centuries,
We humans ask: have we been boon or blight
To this green planet where we seek the Light
For so few days before our sure demise.
Brave birds who nest among privet's blossoms white,
Do you count humans as a boon or blight?
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