Atop our complex seventeen,
There lie a garden with a view.
And there a yellow flower bloomed,
A daffodil I'd not yet seen.
It rested in a crannied space,
A crack within the concrete wall.
A wonder it could live at all
Within that dry-dull hiding place.
Below, a triggered whir and buzz;
A hum and breath: the seedlings' heat.
All teeming mass, the green pulse beats,
And, oh, how warm that concrete was!
Of vine and cable, steel and bark,
So galvanized and intertwined,
All full of life, that mechic grind,
Begotten, not made of man's own spark.
I plucked the flower from the wall,
And wept to think it might be dead.
I wondered what there could be said
Or if there were a God at all.
