August Poet Judy Miller -

Concrete Weeds - I

City weeds, standing tall, rooting in concrete, finding their strongholds

Breaking up parking lots, finding life in the cracks, surviving hostile conditions

With the chance

That before they are pulled, poured over, eliminated by a dose of toxic spray

They will have a day

To just, bloom, to show the world, that they

Are indeed, not just a weed

But a concrete flower.

Not all that glitters is obvious.

It’s sometimes oblivious, insidious, fastidious,

often shows resilience in its mysteriousness.

Veins to nourish concrete life.

Only compete with the heat of the street

and the well cultivated, calculated, celebrated garden located cousins designated for table top vases.

They both have their places,

in the garden of life.

Sometimes a seed from a concrete weed will unceremoniously travel on a shoe, a bird drop, or a tire,

Transportation not hired,

Away from its parent, the errant offspring, its odd inheritance, apparent, but not to the mode of conveyance.

It unravels with the purveyance of purpose.

Away from the city, it searches for pretty, or to be looked on as gritty,

No pity is given from the grounds committee, entrusted to clean up the lot.

Its roots hide under the asphalt, it halts, finds home, under a dome of hope in the lot of a sanctuary,

it grows in its arbitrary monastery, a contemporary, if cautionary, purveyor of life.

Rain falls quietly on the pavement,

A cleansing agent, of the dirty, oily soily, masses that pass through on their way,

Buttoning up their day.

A collective sigh, from the concrete weeds, enjoying the water, a fodder for the underneath world,

Undisturbed, unobserved, from above.

No pretenses, their offenses are living,

While life is pissing upon them.

Bold, not meant to be told, sold, or controlled by those extolled to a higher place on the evolutionary chain,

They remain constitutionally, inclusionary in their explosions to deter erosion,

Creating organic matter, the batter of life,

Homing the homeless insects and organisms that have lost their way.

In their own vernacular, concrete weeds are spectacular ambassadors, nature’s resilient managers.

If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, maybe the eyes need to be bolder in their vision.

Seize your inner weed, it may be the only seed you need,

To break apart your hard soil and grow.