The Thistle and the Old Man

This weed-glutted earth, a land

strewn with dry twig, stem and

root, the rubble of autumn and

old age disheveled in frigid wind.

But there, a flower, the unaccompanied

idiot of the wood, rambler, the

not-spoken-for, intruder, the scribble

in dust and snow—a thistle, its machinery

of petals, padlock of leaves. There is,

within the landscape of the years I inhabit

—seed-like, bereft of fashion, gripping

hard soil—such a flowering word.