Flower
in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
“Flower in the Crannied Wall”
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Daylilies, lavender, and dianthus
push through sidewalk cracks
next to abandoned factories in dying towns,
reaching for the heaven
above the heavens
against all odds on the
craps table
that wreaks havoc with the
ceaseless circadian.
Old men play chess in the
park,
knowing they are checkmated
before they shuffle to the
bench
like pawns moving one square
or two
into an opening gambit of
graves.
The commuter from New
Rochelle
folds his paper and stares
through the train window,
unable to recall whether he
kissed his wife lately
because his memory meanders
like a stream.
Rusted farm equipment from
the forties
sits on foreclosed acres of bindweed
and nettles.
Oh, but it was good when it
was good,
with tube radios, freckled children,
and fireside chats
fertilizing crops by some
sleight of hand
known only to carnival
barkers and God.
Lovers kiss as they stroll
down the avenue,
oblivious to disapproving
stares
while holy men knotted into a
lotus quietly meditate
and sunlight slides across a
lazy gecko
paying rent on a white
Arizona rock.
And then there are the poor
and lowly,
who have been diagrammed below
the sentence,
yearning only for the syntax
of warm beds.
All of these vignettes are
short stories and poems,
no more than aspiring
asterisks
fallen to the bottom of
yellowed pages
in basement archives where
silence
is given perpetual lease.
But all are redeemed from
oblivion’s yoke,
ransomed from insult and lavender’s
decay.
Raindrops quench the
daylily’s thirst,
for the first shall be last
and the last shall be first.
~William Hammett
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