Online Journal
Finding grace
Roots grow by living long in the same place.
They seem to never think of where,
but always just here.
Their days are spent poking through
endless black corners of soil,
and launching tiny explosions
into hard packed earth
over and over, day after day
until, unexpectedly to each delicate tendrils,
some lucky burst
finds strange, disorienting, empty air --
a place so different
it takes their breath away.
And suddenly the shape they have longed for,
the one budding confusedly inside all along,
begins to take shape.
Millions of little volcanoes
erupt underground with new energy,
draw spirit upward
into this wild, open space
where possibilities appear endless.
The result may seem to us
to be raggedy, or sauntering,
or dancing, or even wounded.
But after seasons in the dark
they have found their own grace,
their own joy,
and now simply press forward
in the welcoming spring air.
-Jenifer Cartland