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.