Stubborn insistence gets you nowhere: you wait at the door, unyielding.
Or suddenly it softens what seemed forevermore unyielding.
You know well enough that not every front of armor means strength.
That underneath was always a tenderness, itself a core unyielding.
And you’ve learned that water, patient unlike any other, in time
wears down the hardest stones, despite stores that seem unyielding.
At night, before you get into bed, you turn on a sound machine,
choosing the looping track of ocean washing up on shore, unyielding.
The line between water and sand doesn’t keep track of hits or misses.
Day and night, it brings the same raft of questions, some more unyielding
than others, others with a hidden seam that betrays a hollow beneath.
What question tests you more than others? What is more unyielding?
Gardeners plant corms as winter nears—crocus, gladiolus. These store
nutrients through that season which seems most dormant and unyielding.