Out of Place

With my job in college, I got to spend a lot of time outside. I had so much time to just be in my own world thinking. One day I was sitting by the duck pond and I noticed this grass growing through the cement. It looked so strange there surrounded by gray. I felt a connection to it for some reason- as if I too lived in a place where I didn't quite belong.

April 12, 2001- age 18

Out of Place

Like the sole flower in the desert of brown and paleness

glowing bright with colors and making things 

appear out of place.

Living soft and sweet in a land marked by

sharpness and dryness makes it seem that

things are out of place.

Dying yearly and returning rarely on the old and stable

masters of the heat show that

things are out of place.

But that color lives because of the wetness of that

very master's veins that makes

things out of place.

So it is with green stems pouring through the 

gray squares of city sidewalks,

looking out of place.

It is colored and alive and growing through

a cracked, lifeless creation 

and looks out of place.

The leaf dies on its own and returns on its own unlike

the block that depends on man fixing it

where it's out of place.

But it has strength and protection and admiration

because it fights that concrete slab

even if it is out of place.

So it is with the person who has flare and passion and

fights to live true in a world where they are 

labeled out of place.