_A single upstart soldier stood

Waving like a silly body

A tunic green; a hood of blood

From dawn to noon, from bud to bravery_

_Upholding a light to nature’s Spring courages

Tucked in a niche crevice upright alone

No panoply profuse nor gaudy entourages

Just a nip of soil, around plenteous place of stone _

The Song

I am a flower, look now at how I tower

I have been up parading here for now above an hour

I shall have my way I shall take my time and laugh and play

I’m a flimsy fellow, a simple lowly creature of a day

I am a creature has settled here in a bleak crevice

I am a servant doing a convivial local service

Here by a wall I stand impudent and raise my head

To stick up rude, protrude, though soon I shall have to make my bed

I’m a sentry planted - a hidden hand, here, there, evolved me,

My fathers and mothers made me from bit of mists and silted sands

A fortuitous breeze and a pigeon’s sneeze laid me down slanted

Here in my crevice, for service, begotten in hidden harness

Not in a pasture, a city street I sit in, blinking

I wobble and shake and sing in a glittering tinselled hat

In sunshine; the hot and lubbard winds crisp past me, this way, that

Mayhaps from a peephole you’ll notice me; you’ll sparkle thinking?

Why here in a corner in this most inauspicious spot

The seed I once was perchance, found hereabouts to stop

Inset within brick-made wall, dibbed-in by freak of weather

I bound enough grass so to keep my spindly veggie self together

Why I thrived and water rained, and my skiey root became my tether,

And I’m here, beautiful unremarkable, an accomplished marvel meagre

And just one or two from the passers-by might start-awake, and pother

See my bright red heads bear a certain scent; a sentience implies another,

A replete an other, an abiding lover, behind my propagation

(And here a low weed is getting high and mightily above its humble station!) -

Before it, and above it, and between and it below,

An author, good guide, gardener, the great big reason why I grow.