Cornflower

by Jay Udall

Come into droning corridors,
seething heat, exhausted air,

come from wandering seeds
finding cracks, seams in asphalt

and cement, climb through gravel
shoulders, up from a few grains

of grit, diesel soot, among fierce
weeds, crushed plastic, metal, glass

fragments, single shoes, rise
between dichotomies of thought,

wars raging against the Other,
come silently, unnoticed until

your spindly spine and branches
lift your lucid, disarming blue.

Jay Udall‘s latest book of poetry is Reach Beyond Reach (2022 Comstock Review Chapbook Prize). His poems have recently appeared in Great River Review, SLAB, Bangalore Review, and Arlington Literary Journal. He lives in northern Virginia, where he teaches English and lives with four feral animals: a spouse, a daughter, a hound, and a cat.