Spring

close up photo of a purple flower bud with white micro organisms in the crevices between the petal and the base of the flower
It’s the first day of spring in the Southern Hemisphere

Budding garden poised:
hands bowed in pious prayer;
safe home to microbes.

Fighter

close up photo of the first leaf of a sunflower pushing from the earth, with a shoe print on top of it
My housemate accidentally stepped on a patch we’d sowed sunflowers in, and the next morning, the first leaf had emerged

Smothered underfoot,
weight of the earth over it,
sunflower rises.

Emerge

close up photo of a bottlebrush flower, partly in bloom
Bottlebrush, a tree of the Myrtaceae family, endemic to Australia

As the seasons turn,
growing from the inside out—
bottlebrushes bloom.