Nasturtium

You don’t need your orange hat to be beautiful.
You’re already like a green sand dollar,
a sign of abundance
with the Christ star in the middle.
Your eye is of white lightning
from which ecstatic streaks
extend out to your edges
spilling into finely etched mosaic triangles.
Intentionally, imperfectly round
like you’ve been spun
from a loving artist’s pottery wheel,
you’d make an ideal fairy plate.
Gentle, quivering world on a stem,
you are an antennae for the Earth,
compassionate enough to hold the shadows
of clovers, blades of grass
and traveling flies.
To think you’ve been living here in my back yard
and I’ve hardly noticed you
other than something that grows between
the vegetables in my garden.
When I touch your face it’s like touching
the softest skin behind my knees.
Forgive me for ever putting you in my salad
before praising the keeper
of lost innocence you are.