The prompt at Poets United Thursday Think Tank yesterday was "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow". Yesterday we had a snowstorm, and today the earth is encrusted in ice. So this is what came through :
I consider the lily:
deep underground,
with a small pick-axe,
muttering.
She is
trying to
chip away at
the frozen hardpan
above,
grumbling about
the sheer impossibility
of ever emerging
from this
icy tunnel,
where the ground
will not yield,
where nothing
assists
her passage
into the sun.
I identify.
Late winter
can feel like this,
to a lily,
to a hungry crow,
to a tired human
afraid to open
the oil bill.
Like the lily,
we all await
just a little
"give" in the earth,
so we can
get some purchase on
our passage,
slip
one more time
above
the frozen hardpan
and into
the light and warmth
of one more spring.
