I wonder why
for some of us
life is like a long
season of waiting.

Does the cone flower
know the brevity
of its dance;
its one brown
eye blasted daily
by the sun–
can it see
anything
but the sky?

I’m a flower too
and my season
has been long.
For me, there
is no fall
in this place
just an endless
summer of grief.

I am unnatural,
a seed lifted
by the breeze
and carried here–
distant from the prairie,
distant from the tall grasses,
distant from the meadow lark,
and distant from that softer
season when the earth
puts on its gray hat
and takes its flowers home.