Still Life with Continuity

© Matthew Word Bain

look how quickly life returns
to the places where people
have tried to keep it out
after very little inattention
and from the most improbably
small opportunities — cracks, chinks
fissures, openings — anything that will
let in light and water, a tiny seed
and then in the blink of an eye
there is a tree where once
just moments before
there was only
bare asphalt
and Pan
has
returned
triumphantly
and almost as if
he had never left…