Finally it’s blooming: the stubborn bud.
One day it woke with sudden vigor
and showed its heart to the limitless sky.
For so long, I had sat with it.
Nothing I offered ever persuaded it to open:
not fresh air, dewdrops, or footfalls of pollinators.
Its small refusal was mighty, obdurate —
unflowerlike.
I gave the bud a fairy-tale’s length of time:
Enough time for everything around us
to change.
The saplings at the office park grew into giants.
Civilizations rose, fell. The earth warmed.
I wanted nothing more than to give up on the bud.
Had it dropped from its stalk, dry,
I would have been glad, and gone to the mall.
But at long last the bud unfurled,
stretching its petals to their full length —
glorious.
Come! I said to it. Let’s put you on a hat or cake.
Stand here at the center of the celebration table.
The students are waiting to paint your portrait in oils.
But the flower wasn’t listening.
Looking around, it found what it had come for:
the sun
stared it in the face and screamed with delight.
And the sun with its trillion eyes
gazed back at the flower:
a joyous recognition beaming between them
so fierce and certain
it somehow included even me.