Next to the UAB Hospital Townhouse

in front of Tracy’s Café

    By K.B. Kincer

in the narrow crack where the marble facade

meets the concrete sidewalk, marsh grasses fan bright green

against the grey cement.

What wind blew their seeds to Birmingham? What wind?

No one sprays these shoots stretching for sun

around window boxes arranged with plants engineered

for narrow, rectangular spaces: pansies, dwarf pine.

At the corner of University and Twentieth Street, weeds live

on the boulevard’s slanting light

and dirt from sidewalk cracks.  In the wind tunnel

formed by hospital buildings

and breezes gusting from rushing cars, trucks and ambulances,

they tremble and wave.

© 2011 K.B. Kincer

K.B. Kincer was awarded an M.F.A. in creative writing with a concentration in poetry from Georgia State University and is currently in the doctoral program there. Her poems have appeared in The Healing Muse, Poet Lore, Dappled Things, Red River Review, The GSU Review, and elsewhere.

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