Slice of Life: Ode to a Yellow Succulent

Thanks to Two Writing Teachers who host Slice of Life, and the entire supportive SOL community. 

For over thirty years I have met with a group of women friends on the long weekend in May. For the last couple of decades we have been meeting at a three bedroom cabin overlooking the ocean. On Saturday we went meandering along a path circumnavigating a small peninsula that divides the ocean from a secluded bay. At the very tip we discovered sedum blooming. I fell in love. Later I returned by myself with my camera and these darlings wouldn't let go of me. I sat there perched on lichen painted rock, admiring them while this poem wrote itself.

Ode to a Yellow Succulent

Look at you,
glorious, brave and hardy,
daring to thrive at the edge of no man's land

Look at you,
staking your claim in time and space
here at the perimeter of sphagnum moss

where gatekeepers of the land,
black basalt sentinels,
rounded and potted from conflict with ancient seas,
mark time in millennium

Look at you,
standing stalwart at rigid attention
serene in the face of gale and salt spray
radiant in hues of green, pink, blue, and red
flaunting your yellow crown

proudly proclaiming,

I am here,
Look at me!