Moxie and Mettle

The needles from past Christmas trees
keep showing up in all the strangest places.
This February morning, on my laptop keyboard,
Thanksgiving weekend, between the pages of a novel,
two summers ago, in the vegetable crisper,
and weekly in the cat litter or under the aging couch.

I can’t decide if I admire their persistence
or rue the day evolution gave them life.
Peevish, piercing, petulant —
dead and friendless, but ever green.
Today, they remind me of good teachers,
the kinds that make the learning stick.

Is resilience something silky smooth,
a shiny apple of a virtue,
primping for primetime, cameras flashing,
or the spirit of random pine needles
refusing to quit and annoying as hell
to the naked soles of our feet?

Nevertheless, she persisted,
could be said of this tiny tree remnant too.
A rebuke first, then a rallying cry,
buttressing our souls for human feats
and tattooed on my friend’s arm
in my signature scrawl.

I want to find ways to remain sustained
even after hiding between the covers
of a bed or book for a while,
to return to the moxie and mettle
of just showing up
again and again and again.