So, yesterday autumnbottom, my friend visiting London (Hiya!) told me about a local story -- a full-grown tomato plant, complete with fruit, growing in a crack of a busy highway there.

This tale of hope and gritty perseverance inspired me to write a poem last night. I tried a new form for me, a villanelle, which is a difficult form to pull off. It's a 19-line poem with the rhyme scheme aba aba aba aba aba abaa, with lines one and three repeating in certain set places throughout the rest of the poem.

I've posted it to the poetry site I go to every so often. Since I'm so proud of myself for writing a villanelle, I'll post it here also. ;-)


Highway Tomato Plant (A Villanelle)

Pushing through pavement with a questing root
a young tomato plant drinks in the day
while thousands bustle past on their commute.

Buses and lorries pass in close pursuit.
Improbably, you flowered in that clay,
pushing through pavement with a questing root.

Your nectared stalks and downy greens refute
the concrete median's impassive gray,
while thousands bustle past on their commute.

What stubborn urge impelled you to set shoot
where stronger stuff than you is ground away?
Pushing through pavement with a questing root

and turning sun and soil to leaf and fruit
is your vocation, life your salted pay.
While thousands bustle past on their commute,

you persevere, an obdurate salute
to vital hope. Yours is the right of way,
pushing through pavement with a questing root
while thousands bustle past on their commute.