the thistle

It’s frustrating, isn’t it,
how beautiful the thistle flower is.

You spend all morning shoveling
up foot by foot the monstrous roots, grappling

with uncompassionately barbed
green branches, some as long as your arm,

that afternoon to see the one
you missed still standing upright like a Hun

on horseback after battle, cheeks
flushed pink with victory, opposed to neat

solutions: and to know this poor
remainder of a flower will win the war.