Native Growth (Poem)

Native Growth

I looked for the roses
in December, put

nose so low to hard
ground, as if smelling

what was cold and dead
already could be enough

to satisfy the hunger to
bloom in unfiltered light.

You always said the color
red doesn't please once

it dries a weak brown hue.
Too quickly we were

caught on stubby thorns,
green as the fibrous stem

serving its double duty —
channel both from and to

source of nourishment.
To dig deeper does not protect

against the tear in skin thin
as the paper you'll sign

to stop my planting in this
climate zone so far north.

Native growth, you remind
me, wants nothing to survive.

What it needs it claims its own.

© 2013 Maureen E. Doallas