Even the zebra mussels who lie here in ruins carved clean,
bleached and rattling in the sand and subtle music of foam,
encrusting the driftwood, even these unloved thumbnails
bear their deaths well in the sun, shorn of whatever nerve

and appetite they harbored, having clung so tightly to sift
their lives from shallow water. Even the misplaced, exiles
borne in ballast, on bowlines, waterweeds and bilge,
claim their foothold in time. Even invaders, cloggers

and corroders, crowding out the local, even the reviled
break down under foot, under time, under wave. Sooner
or later you can’t tell the stranded from the strand. Sooner
or later sand and grit gather us up, the mussels and me.

Bone and shell and splintered wood and even ground-down
glass beatified, tumbled time and time again through the gates
of the green waves until even the broken bottle, mindlessly
thrown, assumes the rounded shape of the shining world.

Max Garland’s newest book of poems is Into the Good World Again (Holy Cow Press 2023), where “Invasive” originally appeared. Other books include The Word We Used for It, winner of the Brittingham Poetry Prize, The Postal Confessions, winner of the Juniper Prize, and Hunger Wide as Heaven, winner of the Cleveland State Poetry Prize. He taught for many years at UW-Eau Claire, served as Writer-in-Residence for the City of Eau Claire, and is the former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin. Read more of his work on VolumeOne.org.