Bollard

Robin Stevens, "Boat Tailed Grackle," 2009

Unmoored and planted alongside an alley, stripped of everything
except for budding coruscations, these concrete and iron cuttings
waiting to root. This is how we grow hedgerows now, not with briar
that tugs at the sleeve of a traveler, but with something that lets a
traveler sidle by on foot. The builder knows no one who’d walk the
asphalt path down, but I would for this gift—watching a grackle land
then ruffle and settle, a pitch-black rose blooming on a bollard stalk.