Ordinary Beauty, Mount Saint Helens
Robin Michel
Get over it.
The life you lived
is not the life
you are living now.
Wildflowers bloom
beside the road
a wild profusion of color
delicate stems and lacy petals
hardy enough to withstand
all but the crush of a boot.
The heart that beats the wildest
is calmed in the presence
of such "ordinary" beauty.
Say I love my life and mean it.
Say I love all of my lives, past and present
and mean that, too.
Stare skyward without flinching.
Sun or rain. It doesn’t matter.
Watch your heart rearrange itself
into the petals of a flower.
Drink deep what is given.
The life you lived
is not the life
you are living now.
Wildflowers bloom
beside the road
a wild profusion of color
delicate stems and lacy petals
hardy enough to withstand
all but the crush of a boot.
The heart that beats the wildest
is calmed in the presence
of such "ordinary" beauty.
Say I love my life and mean it.
Say I love all of my lives, past and present
and mean that, too.
Stare skyward without flinching.
Sun or rain. It doesn’t matter.
Watch your heart rearrange itself
into the petals of a flower.
Drink deep what is given.
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Robin Michel (she/her) is originally from Utah but moved to Northern California at the age of seventeen. She now lives in San Francisco on the unceded land of the Ramaytush Ohlone people. She is the author of two poetry collections, Beneath a Strawberry Night Sky (Raven & Wren Press, 2023) and Things Will Be Better in Bountiful (Comstock Review, 2024), winner of the the 2023 Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Contest. Robin has over twenty-five years’ experience providing communications services and project management to non-profits and educational institutions and may be contacted at www.robinmichelwriter.com.
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