The city came by with a tank

The city came by with a tank

of yellow poison and a hose.

The curb is a graveyard of brown

and chemical salt.

But I pulled back the plywood

leaning near the dumpster

and found a thistle

the color of a blind fish.

It grew in the dark,

stretching sideways for a gap,

a translucent spine

that never saw the sun

but knew exactly where it wasn't.