Skeptics see sun-baked shaggy shrubs,
annoyances to be uprooted,
gnarled bushes with a pungent scent.
Encounters often end in standoffs.
But wiry brush of silver-green
reminds me of endurance,
upended days spent in a landlocked
sea of foamless waves.
Harsh land, or what sustains?


First appeared in The Poetic Inventory
of the Rocky Mountain National Park