The Roots

Scouring the trees for the sweet fruit of a farmer’s bitter harvest

Sometimes you take what you can get and wolf it down

Even if it’s not well deserved

Even if it means snapping the fruit off too soon

 

Mend the hurt of rending by doing twice the good

Dig holes, plant the seeds, water them everyday.

 

During the planting season, all we turn up are rocks

Thanks to the glaciers of the ice age passing through

An ecosystem of jagged rocks living between the hint of rich soil

Forcing the roots to cradle the bits they can’t change

Dig deep and deeper still,

To live in harmony of soft and rough

 

Summers spent chucking stones

That somehow move back into the garden bed anyways

Grounded and giving

In the only way it knows how

 

Humble me, force me out like a stone amidst the roots of the orange tree,

And then show me a gentleness the branch of the fruit tree was not shown.