Two hundred feet from the road I am adrift
in the silence of seeds folded into themselves,
waiting for the particular combination of heat
and rain, perhaps the first in years, that will free them.

Tiny purple flowers, no bigger than the pupil of my eye,
hold down the stones. The ajo lily, its pungent root
deep in the sand, lifts white bells into heat and silence.
Each thing here respects its time and purpose.

I do not have the wisdom of seeds. Is there counsel
in a rusted tin or pottery shard, faint trails into the hills?
I take measurements, cast lines like some windblown spider
to affix myself among solid objects: white granite outcrop

a mile ahead; black lava ridge at two o’clock;
behind me, the road linking memory to promise.
Each step requires care to prevent unsettling
this delicate web I string to hold myself in place.

I regard the grace of the ajo lily, the tenacity
of small flowers. These are as truthful as angles
and distances, as binding as the certainty of rocks.

Breath loosens in this tracery of design,
and I am cast into the cadence of stems unfolding,
the whisper of roots learning their way.

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Charity Everitt is retired following a career in technical writing and engineering software design and development. Her poems have appeared in Lyrical Iowa, River Heron Review, Comstock Review, Concho River Review, and Sky Island Journal, among others. Her first chapbook, Translation from the Ordinary, was published in 2023 (Finishing Line Press).

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