Pomegranate tree by the side of the freeway,

you make me feel deeply.

A metaphor of our day and age?
The lush, slow forming serenity encompassed on all sides by a blitzing concrete jungle.

Unrelentingly the sun beats down the pavement and petal alike.
The strange co-mingling of man's seemingly never ending expansive ambition

with Mother Nature's silently assured stillness.

Childishly, I wonder if the tree enjoys the constant breeze off the highway its roots dig under and through.

The resiliency of our planetary-gripped relatives seems to dwarf our 5-year plans and traffic remediations.

The ruby red-maroon skin of each of many baseball-sized sweet gifts, matched with the floral wafting aroma serve as a sensory uplift contrasting horns, engines, and sewage vapor.

It stands in defiance of our plans, in direct and opposite position to the modern world around it.

Yet,
It grows WITH our plans.

As the highway lanes swell with more and more ants scurrying about their streetlight hills, the tree inspires and cleans their noxious releases, and grows hardy from the metal-laden Earth.

It dampens the studious roar of our dinosaur powered horse carriages as its image alone brightens the elephant skin painted dystopia.

It shows us that no matter where life puts us, we always have something to offer our world.
We always have an opportunity to keep reaching for the light.

Thank you pomegranate tree by the side of the freeway.

Today,
You were my muse.