Woods Talk

Eric Trethewey

Tiny flower, obscure
citizen doing your best
to draw attention to yourself,
to the five-petalled busyness
you hold up to the world
come earliest spring
on the slope of this mountain.
Loosely intended for anything
that might care, your yellow
message stands as succinctly
for yourself as for the rest
of us-the insolent crow
high over my shoulder,
the young dog snuffling his way
to ecstasy through last year's
dead leaves, and the dead ash
lying across the stump
where I sit down to record
the scarcely noticeable
words of this address.