Coltsfoot

The coltsfoot is in bloom—
are words no one
has ever been moved to say.
Poking up its fringed face

along the wasted roadside,
through dead leaves
grayed with winter,
coltsfoot doesn’t ask

to be looked at.
Yet here you are,
waylaid by what seems
a stunted, oddly early

dandelion. Its dullness
is a kind of dogma.
You can rely on it.
It won’t tear you up on the inside

with some unnameable beauty—
like a nothing-special
sunset, when the light
just goes.