Days ago, the drive to the hospital,
the streets ruddy and sleek-silver
in early spring rain. The last chill and
the buds about to burst, waiting for
heat to help them along. Today everything
warmed by the golden touch of late March’s sun.
They drive past forsythia’s flailing yellow limbs,
the dogwood petals, pink and white
with the new baby, who will grow to love
the spring she was born in. The baby,
who will soon smile at azaleas red as fire,
red as the first strands of hair that will mark her
as the wild one, full of flame. She will defy
them all, blaze zig-zagged trails through
their attempted peace.

Anne Hunley Trisler is a writer, mother, and Fundraising Event Coordinator for a non-profit in Knoxville, Tennessee. Through the University of Tennessee, she won the Margaret Artley Woodruff Award for Creative Writing for her poetry and received an Eleanora Burke Award for Nonfiction. Her work has appeared on Mothering.com and in Struggle, Barbaric Yawp, and The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review.