Thistle

I love to see a field of thistle

from a distance.  Get too close

and you will bleed.  But someone

has to chop it down before it

goes to seed and spreads its drifting,

downy, dangerous self into a

field of corn or beans or maybe

where the cattle feed.   It has not

many friends except the butterfies and

bees.  And I am not one either except

I love to see it purple in a field, far

away, where it cannot make me bleed.