I only bloom in springtime,
and when I feel the sun too hot
I know how to jerk my roots out
brutally, so there’s no return.

Momentarily wonderful,
a moving flower;
until my petals wither,
useless color with no water.

Dried out fringe on a hunched reed--
Who collects worn stems,
that are locked from the garden,
having trashed the key?

Through the gate I see
the torn spot healing
over the roots of a new bloom,
and the other flowers bathing
their faces in the sun.

In the gravel I sit,
shifting my thirst.
To be rooted again there
is to burrow beneath honesty;
ripping my petals to recover the key.

Rather than there, nowhere,
or here, in the gravel where
if I find my way to a stream
the task is a triumph,
and if to a trickle,
still stand upright.