Snow drops

Their bowed heads tremble
in the displaced air from the Broad Street traffic
Nestled between last year’s leaves,
this year’s grass, and everything
we’ve discarded 
a limp surgical mask, a busted hubcap,
a flattened can, a toilet paper roll

Their outer white petals are three-clawed
like a dinosaur, protecting an inner coil
of yellow-gold stamens
encircled by white-green petals

I sit with them a while,
on this tiny slope 
between the sidewalk and the wrought-iron fence.
I guess this is why we hope.
In February small flowers grow, snow or not.
Winter blooms into spring.
We comfort ourselves that the days
are getting longer, the sun 
lingering more each day

We hold tight to the things we see as constant,
even if they inherently change.
Trusting in this cycle, even as we skew it.
Even as we remake our world,
in our own image, we pray
for it to remain the same.
We ask it to be stronger than us,
to keep us in our place.

Dismay, to realize we have broken the pattern,
with ignorance and arrogance. It hasn’t
snowed much this winter. Everyone
acknowledges the two sides of the coin:
how nice, 70 degrees in February.
Too bad it’s climate change.

Hard not to hope, with these snow drops
as companions. The keeping on
of nature, growing amidst the trash



Rosalie Hendon


Rosalie Hendon is an environmental planner living in Columbus, Ohio with her husband and many house plants. She started a virtual poetry group in 2020 during quarantine that has collectively written over 200 poems. Her work is published in Change Seven, Planisphere Q, Call Me [Brackets], Entropy, Pollux, Superpresent, Cactifur, Fleas on the Dog, Red Eft, Rising Phoenix, MockingHeart, Ariel’s Dream, Willawaw, Quarter Press, and Wingless Dreamer. Rosalie is inspired by ecology, relationships, and stories passed down through generations.