Relentless
By Susan Mardele
Looking out on the late winter landscape,
bleak trees reaching through a rare Texas mist,
All appears dark and dead.
Leafless trees reach bony black arms
to a gray sky.
Tired, golden grass lays this way and that,
a tangled mat in the bog.
Gray sticks of last year’s weeds
punctuate the chaotic weave.
Walking the hard concrete,
one step and another,
Careful not to slip
on the mud sliming the path,
A tiny blink of purple smiles up at me
from the edge.
A weed, that brave one
that starts the vernal wildflower stampede.
If I stop forward momentum
for a moment,
And pause to look…really look closely,
I see a four-millimeter, exquisite orchid.
I know from other Texas springs that it and its kin
will create a haze of purple in the wild places.
Mowed down as weeds,
henbit doesn’t care if we notice.
It just continues to relentlessly create
tiny, exquisite beauty.