Water the Earth

By Brandon “Khoi” Duong 

brandonduong96@gmail.com

IG @khoithepoet

https://www.mendingwallsrva.com/walls/once-upon-with-love

Above the rowdy freeway, behind the brick apartment building,
Between two concrete slabs, there grows a sunflower stalk that didn’t get the memo

Its stem snaking between the woven wire gaps of a chain link tapestry
It dips its toes into the diesel-stained dirt, a stew of Styrofoam beads and plastic threads pricking its feet Watch how fast the flowers flee the ground

This plant sprouted in the wrong neighborhood.
Color so loud the neighbors issue noise complaints

The soil tastes of lead and manganese, a parting gift to the City from the decades-shuttered factories that nestle in the genetic memories of its former workers,
but still the sunflower grows, sprouts budding into leaves that open like a messiah’s arms

In Chernobyl, fields of sunflowers grow in the yards and meadows once populated by humans. They have the unique ability to cleanse soil of nuclear fallout. From the radiated earth, they draw their strength. How hungry they are to heal, to restore, to re-sanctify defiled grounds

Do you think your concrete slabs scare a holy sun manifested into flower? Before your smog-choked skylines were cities of red spruce and black willow, of dogwood and hickory and scarlet oak. 

Do you think the sunflower stands alone? Does not every tree, every fern, every garden rise up in defiance of the blood spilled over it?

Look how sidewalk buckles and splits from a tree that stretches its roots.

See how when one dandelion is mowed down, ten more rise up the next day.

They will look at the color of your petals or the shape of your leaves and deem you a weed but you stand there and grasp onto every ray that the sun tosses to you

They can bring their lawnmowers and herbicides, their shears and their weed wackers but you’ll just come back stronger. More endurant. 

You can kill a revolutionary but you can never kill a revolution.

But young seedling, know that you do not need to bleed in order to water the earth

Moss can break down stone just by being alive. Grass splits asphalt by simply daring to grow. 

So I dare you to grow, in the places that inconvenience them, 

In places that have no room, I dare you to make space,

Infiltrate their walls with your ivy, flank their foundations with your flowers, aim your tree trunks towards heaven and reach until your branches break through the cool cotton clouds to see tomorrow peaking over a sun-kissed horizon

Populated by a sea of sunflowers who dared to flourish.