Ironies in Insults
Calling someone a pansy
Is a bit ironic.
Pansies are tough flowers.
Scouts of spring peeping
Up through snow and freeze.
They don’t need much water
Thrive with very little attention.
Not the kind of flower that coloquially
Means someone weaker, someone
Who is gentle, afraid of conflict,
Possibly a mama’s boy.
Pansies thrive in Colorado weather
One of the few flowers to make it
Entirely untended (the other being
tulips) No small feat
With March blizzards, May flurries.
Tougher than we give them credit.
Nature
Trying to define nature is like
Trying to define art. Because
Nature itself like human nature
Is the essence, the whole,
The soul of it.
But humans are nature
We are fruit of this
Evolutionary tree, born of nature.
Nature is a part of our essence
Of our history because those trees
Out live us. They become something
Beyond what we live to see.
Self
Perhaps we find ourselves in nature
Because in nature
There is space to
B E
R H
E T
A
Away from everyone telling us that
Our lives will be better, more complete
If we act this way or
Buy those products
Fill ourselves with other people
Other things
Here there is none of that
Thoughts, bird songs, wind and river.
Beautiful sights and air.
Time for talk, quiet focus, hard work.
Hard beds.
Here you exist, eat, sleep.
Are.
This is nature, with room for
Your nature
As much as you exist
Without anyone else.