Rose along the roadside,
look at your vagabond clothes--
dust all over your scarlet dress.
The sagebrush and the ragweed grows
around you, but cannot suppress
the beauty in your simpleness.

No garden wall will shelter you
from an August thundershower.
You could have been a royal rose,
clinging to a castle tower.
Held in awe by all the grows-- 
but no...you're just a peasant flower.

Untamed and without boundaries
your leaves reach to the sky.
In freedom there is dignity.
unpresumptuous and shy.
Keeping common company
you blossom sweet humility. 


by Lisa (Teel) Rodriguez