Nevertheless

you’ve seen a strawberry that’s had a struggle; yet was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star- fish for the multitude of seeds. What better food.

than apple seeds - the fruit within the fruit - locked in like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills the little rubber- plant - leaves of kok-sagyyz- stalks, can’t

harm the roots; they still grow in frozen ground. Once where there was a prickley-pear -

leaf clinging to a barbed wire, a root shot down to grow in earth two feet below;

as carrots from mandrakes or a ram’s-horn root some- times. Victory won’t come

to me unless I go to it; a grape tendril ties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times - so the bound twig that’s under- gone and over-gone, can’t stir

The weak overcomes its menance, the strong over- comes itself. What is there

like fortitude! What sap went through that little thread to make the cherry red!