Pearly Everlasting

It's what at last you notice after spring
and all the summer flowers fail.
The bleached-dry ridgetop meadow
and the burn that almost took the town
last year are coming back.
When you've stared past trees
like broken toothpicks in black mouths,
and when you think there's nothing
left here, you recognize and name it:
Pearly Everlasting, as if a silver weed
could redeem a whole landscape.

Taylor Graham