The elegance with which,
In the sweetest humility, the
Lilac senses the time
to show itself-
fights adversity all winter
coldest nights
blowing storms,
clinging to fence posts,
tossed and heaved, 
trampled, pecked by crows,
almost eaten by insects,
pummeled by brute heat-
yet the whole time 
still as a stone-carved Buddha
meditating,
silently greets the world
in its vow of silence, birth to death alone, in the rain
weaving its being into a nameless red blossom
opening at dawn.

And is body
we preserve
in pages of books,
that have kept our belief in love,
next to poetry lines we love so much
where we place our dreams
for safekeeping
from the harmful world
that hurts us so much sometimes,
I place this flower.

-Jimmy Santiago Baca