THE LION’S TOOTH: Split Grace

I’m not just a weed in a wind-blown place,

Not a blot on your lawn, not a small disgrace.

I’m a brief gold flare that won’t stay buried,

A child of the edges, unsanctioned, uncarried.

I rise where you never thought life would root,

Through concrete seams, through the drag of a boot.

In places mistaken for care, not home,

Held in the break, I grew;

a coin of sun caught in the pavement’s teeth.

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Call me dandelion, lion’s tooth, split grace,

Half in your garden, half out of place.

Each leaf a record, each notch a trace,

green serrations like a bitten coin,

of being unnamed in a named-up place.

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I don’t ask the bees, I tempt them near,

First sharp bloom when the light turns clear.

No one showed me the work I do;

I made my way, thin roots worrying the dark.

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You paved your garden, tidied your view,

Cut back the wild you never knew,

trained every reaching thing to a line,

taught it what shape to call “fine.”

You measured the green, marked out the say,

Who belongs, and who’s swept away.

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I’ve been called a pest, a problem, a stain,

Looked straight through, then through again.

Quick in the field, indestructible roots,

Displaced yet still bearing shoots.

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I don’t carry stars, only the sun I’ve known,

Held in a head that I’ve made my own.

And when you blow on that silver dome,

I come apart into a weather of silk,

and you send me on.

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No gardener claimed me, no border agreed

What part was flower, what part was weed.

Half this, half that, never made whole,

Still I took root in split-held soil,

fed by a ground that bent what grew.

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So next time you curse what you call wild,

Think of the ground that refused the child.

You want your green cut neat to the line,

Measured and level, all by design.

I’ll still rise up on the other side,

Unasked, unwatered, and not denied,

a flare in the seam of your careful lines.

Because I am what returns, what begins again,

What slips past the edge of your careful pen.

Not your disgrace, not what you thin,

I begin where you tried to end me,

not what was meant,

still I begin.

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PRETTY

See the stars on their filaments,

glitter thru the leaves.

Put your ear to the ground

listen to the trees  (grow)

close your pretty eyes my child, rest upon your knees

and pray that there’s salvation

from the swamp and the sleaze

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Kiss the pregnant rosebud,

feel the petals burst.

Glory as the rain sucks

a flower from the dirt.

Sing your pretty song my love, melt into the breeze

and hope that there’s deliverance

from the swamp and the sleaze.

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Pretty lady; needing hope

pretty life; smeared with coke

pretty playmates; faithless grins

pretty awful; pretty sins.

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Drink the milk and honey

celebrate in style

the harvest and the sunset

the beauty and the smile.

Let your pretty heart fly,

like the fledglings from the trees

Make a wish for your redemption

from the swamp and the sleaze…

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Maybe I can save you

if you close your pretty eyes,

if you sing that pretty song of yours

as your pretty heart flies.

Maybe I can save you,

if you ask me pretty please;

I’m pretty sure that pretty soon

You will be released.

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Pretty lady; needing hope

pretty life; smeared with coke

pretty playmates; faithless grins

pretty awful; pretty sins.