This Brief Glory
      By JoHannah P. Green

Seeds have fallen
wind-sown, bird-sown,
watered by the rain,
flowers and weeds alike. They have grown up.
Left to themselves
in this part of the garden,
they have bloomed,
flowers and weeds alike.
It pleased the gardener to let them be,
a gift to the ponderously ungraceful,
black and yellow bees
that pollinate the vegetables
and the precious roses.
Flowers and weeds alike, they have given
a wild grace
to this overlooked corner of dirt.

They did not choose to grow here.
beside the fence, shaded by willow branches,
They have done the best they can,
flowers and weeds alike,
in the hard soil,
watered by the rain.
In this last, pale, month of summer light.
they inch upward,
straining,
like the precious roses,
that struggle,
to reach the top of the garden arch.
All hunger to reach to the same
golden glory.

They did not choose to grow here
shaded by the fence.
They have done the best they can.
Do they know by the angle of the light,
sliding lower with every sunset,
the cooling air of their demise?
The lush and languid season,
like a sleeper turning over in bed,
pulls away the blanket,
exposing all.
Do the forgotten flora,
reaching upward in their corner by the fence,
recognize the light's decline for what it is,
and cherish the final moments of
this brief glory?
Or do they simply envy the rose?