Unseen
The folly of faith,
impossible to describe,
seeing the roots, the buds
connected but separated
by the trunk – crusty,
immovable, a thick stick
stubborn realty.
The buds are the fruit of faith
as the roots drink, low, snake-like in
their undercavern – moist with the fluids of earth,
tougher than the surrounding insects and worms,
carrying substance through
the almost impenetrable wood –
wood for paper, wood for footbridges,
and for building beaver dams
and a multitude of varied homes.
When the buds bloom, we smell the blossom
hold their fragile sides, unplucked inside a gentle touch.
Then the songbirds come, the squirrels, the first summer’s
light, and the buds turn into apples, peaches, a succulent cherry.
The faith of the root is actualized.
We consume, satiated by the sweet flesh and nectar –
nutrients flow into fingertips, bellies-centred,
calf muscles, and our brains, fed,
able to charge unchartered pathways,
revolutionary understanding, shoulder altruism.
Faith is this folly that only
the poor in expectation can see,
faith as fodder for the foal, necessary
as the change of seasons, faith
that begins
in the root-blood-bond darkness
far below.
Copyright © 2021 by Allison Grayhurst
amazon.com/author/allisongrayhurst
.https://issuu.com/allisongrayhurst/docs/book_32_-ways_of_mercy_-_the_poetry_of_allison_gra
.
First published in “Rave Cage Zine” March 2021
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OHHDKazRmtKcCPpR4sco_SrxoK19029c/view
.
You can listen to this poem by clicking the link below: