Even on a Marine Layer Day

By George Yatchisin

One of our nasturtium
out its heart bleeds
an even brighter orange
you have to get close to
to be sure it’s not shadow,
some glory you just hope
to glimpse, inadvertently
revising the world. So
when you realize it’s real,
gorgeous and mindless
and without a need for you,
you remember it’s just
a showoff weed, a re-seeder
with the good sense
to be indiscriminate.

George Yatchisin is the author of Feast Days (Flutter Press 2016) and The First Night We Thought the World Would End (Brandenburg Press 2019). He is co-editor of Rare Feathers: Poems on Birds & Art (Gunpowder Press 2015), and his poetry appears in anthologies including Reel Verse: Poems About the Movies (Everyman’s Library 2019). Also by this poet: "Micheltorena and San Andres" and "Pandemic Domestic"