Baptism by Wilted Flower in Sidewalk Crack  (2013)

See this so dry, weak spurt of dingy flora made  

Sprouting-limp through shaded-fissured concrete poorly laid.  

Its ratty-edged spaded slight-dunned blades at base-  

Flaccid sloped shoot, crook’d spray.  

See it arise inglourious to an apex parched,   

And its haggard-yellow petals in half-wilt.

Its drooped-bloom as if cumbered by guilt-

Could God be so poor at His trade?

Here it sits alone, no brothers or sisters of the field-

On this dank block, in this seared-dim summer city that to ugly yield,

That to misery and lorn, that to sorrow and downfall tilt.

Dour I, downward daze, red-dry eyes dwelling on flawed floret.

I scope it sway on the dolorous slate,

and-in-an amber sweet sunlight it shriveled yet.  

It nigh made me weep, for it reminded me of me -

Alone, barren, homely,

hot, trampled nearly by life on-going-

Though still someway, I saw it saw itself as I saw myself:

Far farther than fortune had flung to our souls by its sowing!

But no tis not our fate to be so great - we wrinkled, we forsaken -

oh, are we not?

We grow, I said, we gruesome two, we grow as we rot -

and the world ignores us, scoffs us, cares not if we were not.  

And there I stood, gazing at the thing on the dank block.

But then! My God! By some amazing how - a swift-flip-flop,

foul-fond shift!

You see, askance I squint and say, “What’s this?”

For palpate I, something fetch!

Now, I see a forceful queer delight at the appalled-site beneath my step -

For smeared in this sparsed, withering near-bruised-burning scape-

the wind-blew fresh, and the stem of this little brittled thing freshly sway,  

rocking the flower just a flit from its rest

so that it did itself for a minute in a sort of pretty mini-minuet!

Where before was this? How so rapid the world transformed!

The dead, greened, the rigid suppled, the desiccated, stormed!

The entire world now drenched and cool in an almost fluid beauty and light!

The entire world deluge, the entire world drip-bedraggled, soothed in bright!  

Oh my eyes attained a second sight, saw a set within a set -

All a’sudden this awful weed awe’d and lo! effulged in like waves

anew wholly beautiful and blest!   

The veins and pinnates plumped to ripe!

The shabby by some alchemy wiped!

The mangled was now magnificent, the worst now the best imbued!

The heaved life of living it, now somehow spirit dewed.

And the reign of dull-veiled, ruined existence was, by me, also not kept-

Twas’ traded for beamed beauty in the mere flower’s beingness

My God, my god, how I streaming wept!

In spirit billows of glory came this beauty rolling, rollicking

And by this Spotlessness was I doused-misty and chilled sately

By some presence, sheened in some holy wet

As this crowned grass lost gross to be a delectable, exquisite holy floweret!

I watched and watched for time, by sodden rapture beset:  

And self vanished far into this new-gorgeous, this new-gorgeous, some dam let!

Then I paused pure, majesty rinsed any foul of me and weed, and softly said a revelation:

“The Presence of God replete eternal in each as a tiny everpresent loving droplet,

The morsel is the ocean despite its size and seeming bitty spread!

So ever more, stop and peer at everything dry-dead, and let the dropt raise up from its bed!

For the Lord may random-ripple fresh baptismal pools, out-from-in, in, onto everything everywhere yet!”