Revolutionary crocuses

Alice Walker has her revolutionary petunias, but if I were a poet, I would write about crocuses. How they bloom where they're not planted. How it matters not how desolate the winter, how wracked with war or fraught with flood, here comes Candlemas and there are the crocuses, shoving up through the mud, pushing out through the snow. I half think they could crack concrete if they had a mind to. I saw one growing once where an old slab had been demolished after maybe 40 years.The flower is fragile. A hard rain will melt it in an instant. But the bulb beneath is tough, and next year she will pour forth her delicate color again.

You might imprison her in your garden, but once she's lost the blossom that you captured her for, she will grow her leaves green and fat for her own pleasure and nourishment. Starting alone, she multiplies and spreads far beyond your established borders. She knows when to hide, when to go underground, and when to rise up singing, by the dozen, by the thousand, for she is related to everything and understands all. She may be crushed by the heel of the mighty, but understand, the flame of a million blooming crocuses will transform the landscape forever.

A careful reader of this poem will notice that it refers to crocuses blooming at Candlemas, about a month earlier than they bloom in Oklahoma. That's because I wrote this poem years ago in Western Oregon.