Perseverance

A clump of dirt –
a scrub of brush
The hard-packed earth baked by the desert sun:
wearily cracked
like it’s too much effort to remain unbroken.

Nothing exists in this tired valley:
it has simply given up on life.

Only a dead cactus
brittle: a blackened skeleton
And the scattered bones of wild cattle
a remainder of what used to be.

But under the bare, brown shrub
emerging from the broken ground,
a new life pushes through.