dear tiny flowers

i know you are weeds and i would kill you
without mercy if you were in my yard
but this is not my space to manage
so i find you wondrous
and take photos of you
zoom in on your opalescence—

the hairs of your neck reaching for water and sun
your stamen and pistil your style and stigma
your musical lure to micro-pollinators
you are your own progenitor
in an endless flick of seed and root
and bloom and fruit

here in this world i cannot control
(and i rage against the powerlessness)
you are a testament to a current
which surges and boils in the detritus
which paints the blank grass lilac and white
which paints the carmine mind blank as wind

you are everything which exists
outside and inside the field of chaos and spring
you have won have always won will always win—
every nerve is a geranium bolting in the dark
every breath an impatiens pod impregnating
the vacuum

wasp nest as the body

everything has a little ghost
inside of it—

the paper and spit
surrounding

a hundred eyes—
a hundred wings

Scott Ferry sings to invisible harpies in dollar stores. Sometimes he writes poems. His book Sapphires on the Graves is coming in late 2024 from Glass Lyre Press.

Image: Field of wildflowers by Philip Halling, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons