#cracked pavement

The slipstream of trucks hurrying their shipments to parts unknown blasts the yellow plumes of late season grasses on highway hillsides. Feathery hands that wave to the traffic also cast flying seeds to the birds, to the wind, to cats chasing fluffy down through damp ally ways, and to the little girl with her dirty fingers and pots of wildflowers. 

Winter is coming to the subtropics, brief and desperate as it is, hoping to freeze pipes, ruin a few houses and perhaps a few lives, if it’s lucky - before the onset of mid-February and the slow retreat, of the ferns and mosses of the cold monsoon. 

The tepid mists tease out the seedlings of hairy bittercress, a European immigrant that plans to lie low beneath home awnings, riding out the winter only to invade every damp nook and cranny come spring. Beside it, native pony’s foot, whorled pennywort and hoary Bowlesia. Between them, the whisper of a soft, shy green suede that could be either algae or moss. It awaits the wet winter and the remission of more aggressive fair weather fiends. 

Dips a tire into a patch of Bermuda grass, prostrate in spaulding pavement before the drive. It will survive. The grass is not from Bermuda rather - it has overrun the place, and seeks to do the same to the neighboring continent. The Buttonweed however, has been here since before memory, hiding beneath the lawns its leaves impersonate, invisible until it’s iconic white blooms taunt the grounds keeper. 

We are here. 

We are waiting,

in the cracks,

on the wind. 

Come,