Some Beauty Lingers
The bloom stays longer
than it should.
It knows what’s next.
Gold-edged, rust-fringed,
it opens
not from joy
but from spite.
The garden gave up first,
everything leaning,
nothing left to hold.
Still, the chrysanthemum lifts
its face as if it doesn’t know
what month it is,
unbothered by frost,
unmoved by endings.
I kneel to trim the stems.
The soil is cold.
My breath comes slow.
I keep showing up,
even now.
Some beauty lingers
just to prove
it can.
And I wonder
if I do too.
© Michael J. Kolb
Michael J. Kolb is a poet and a professor of archaeology based in Colorado. He writes across disciplines, exploring nature, memory, and illness, asking what we carry and what we leave behind. His collection What Keeps Me Looking Out the Window was a finalist for the 2026 Press 53 Award. His poems appear in Third Wednesday, Sky Island Journal, Eunoia Review, Defenestration, Trampoline, San Antonio Review, Speckled Trout Review, and Moss Piglet. Instagram: @michaeljkolb; substack.com/@michaeljkolb.
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