POEMS/ Painted Trillium
Painted Trillium
A group of this year’s Painted Trillium,
have blossomed in a most unlikely place,
where winter’s done its worst to spoil the ground,
and where I never thought to find them.
Behind a pile of ploughed-up weeds and dirt,
among the winter gravel and debris,
they’ve risen up with shining pink and white,
stretching their faces to the spring-time sun.
Their sudden presence in this cheerless spot
is an assertion of their need to bloom, growing
where they can—like children in a war
who play among the rubble in the streets.
This poem appears in All Roads Go Where They Will (Antrim House, 2010) and in the Spring 2014 issue of Avocet, A Journal of Nature Poems
A group of this year’s Painted Trillium,
have blossomed in a most unlikely place,
where winter’s done its worst to spoil the ground,
and where I never thought to find them.
Behind a pile of ploughed-up weeds and dirt,
among the winter gravel and debris,
they’ve risen up with shining pink and white,
stretching their faces to the spring-time sun.
Their sudden presence in this cheerless spot
is an assertion of their need to bloom, growing
where they can—like children in a war
who play among the rubble in the streets.
This poem appears in All Roads Go Where They Will (Antrim House, 2010) and in the Spring 2014 issue of Avocet, A Journal of Nature Poems