Teasel

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If you hold anything long enough
there's bound to be trouble.
It will break apart
a little cup of light,
a sound of rain in open fields.

If you find this spiny flower
pick it up, remember
another fall, a time when the cold
came too quickly and caught the weeds too—
the frost rising into mist,
the mist disappearing.

Today catnip and henbit,
wood sorrel, chicory and brooms edge,
and still you keep looking for its crown
of thorns,
a blue dash in fallen leaves
above the culvert edge.

You know the railroad bed leads
to the creek, and the creek opens
out into the river, and the river
moves southward toward the sea.

At night, you listen for the trooper cars—
the sirens circle the neighborhood
a convict in the marsh.
You think he must have got away
that prisoner,
the man they chased
through river nettles
as the season turned cold.
The morning paper
ran a photograph of the river,
night-lights and search boats.

Today, walking above stone paths
near the water's edge,
you see the pale blue streak in the brown woods
and you know it's there.