O buttercup,
Common little thing of wax,
Bitter blossom cows won’t eat, no garden welcomes,
Often I have kicked you– head from stem– walking through the grass.

Why, then, this poem?
Do I see in you the face of God?
Is it because, unheeded, roadside multitudes of you proclaim summer?
Or that your kind will populate the earth long after all of my descendants have become your food?

No, simply this–
Nowhere else such a color.
Not in your namesake, nor lemon, nor yolk of egg, nor jonquil
Does yellow burn with such a glossy brilliance it can stake me to the ground.