Against the Wind

In late autumn I cleaned some dead flowers from our garden in Potomac, MD.  The winter tempests had already begun: rain, wind and ice storms.    As I looked closer at the beaten chrysanthemums plants I began to see little people.  There were heads of adults and children with wild, dried-in-place hair.  I sketched the battered branches and then wrote the following poem:

Against the Wind

Chrysanthemums dry in the fall,
Face driving rain
And freeze in a windblown state.
Just like us sometimes.

But with God,
We bloom again!