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.