O.K., O.K...  I freely admit it.  I'm in a delightful rut. I tried briefly today to pay attention to trees and even to people, but I was drawn back to flowers... looking at them with insect eyes.  You know, of course, that a dragonfly's eyes have as many as 30,000 lenses.  Yesterday it was the Jimson Weed. Today it's the ubiquitous ice plant that splashes outrageous color all along the banks of our freeways and roads, and the lily under my hummingbird's nest, and an unassuming blue cluster of tiny flowers in a window box on 32nd Street.

EVERGREEN?

You know the leaves on evergreen trees,

the ones that seem to last forever?

They don’t.

Deception is the name of the game with them.

They hang on there through severest weather

looking as if they could survive anything.

I don’t pretend to know how they do it

through drought or too much rain or cold.

When spring comes 

with its out with the old, in with the new

approach to cleaning up things

the leaves from last year fall off.

They’re pushed off, I guess by brand new leaves

that sprout from the branches and twigs

without so much as an excuse me or I beg your pardon.

You see them lying there on the ground

all around the tree in April and May,

finished, forgotten, except maybe by a gardener.

Everything finally winds up as compost, 

which isn’t such a bad thing

when you stop to think about it.