Enemies

I am implacable -- a ruthless harasser of my enemy.  A tangerine hued nemesis called the oriental bittersweet.  Not the tethering vine, the round-leafed sprout, the dark leaved, woody, sun-starved shrub.  Those are only its most superficial disguises -- its forays into the light.  

No, I know that the soul and body of my enemy is the orange root-vine lurking, linking dark redoubt to dark redoubt underneath the moss and fallen leaves.  I snap the shoots, cut the vinestems -- attack the supply lines for sugar and carbon.  But it's only when the hairy, orange rootbody comes up that I feel the grim, satisfying pang of a blow well-struck.

Last summer's challengers, the poison ivy and the greenbrier still send out their scouts and their sneaking runners, but I dispatch them without malice.  I have my enemy.