Chicory

I worry about the chicory, that tinge of pink

in the blue, its sunset delicacy, even with its tough

stalk. Those ragged, blunt petal-tips.

Like my high school Pep Club skirt, pleats

sharp as knives, but someone could easily get

under it. The road here is crooked, cars fly by

at forty-five or fifty. I worry about how few walkers

there are, how alone nature is, out there

sprouting and budding and dying. Can the utterly

unnoticed survive? What about the farthest

reaches of the universe, the other solar systems?

There’s a lot that doesn’t seem to need us,

but the negative space around the flower

is what shapes the flower, so the neglect

of such a powerful mind as ours must collapse

its bloom at least a little. So much reciprocity

necessary to exist: we actually exchange DNA

with those we catch diseases from. The germs

travel to our lymph nodes, carrying a bit

of our infector: we become our enemies!

The quality of our existence is that delicate,

which is why I ran from room to room, comforting

my mother, stacking up my father’s mess,

wiping my poor brother’s drool. No, that’s not

right. I was only holding them all in my mind

to keep them from flying apart. How tired I was,

my little body a strung bow. How small

I’d keep things, little flowers by the roadside,

if I could. I would think of them day and night.