Pools and Puddles All Around Us

 

Pools and Puddles All Around Us

By: Courtney Beck

You keep us close to the ground.

We grasp and claw hoping to rest our

chins on some higher plane

while the rocks and gravel and boulders at our feet

hinder the upward climb. We sit up in the dust with skinned

knees and bruised faces only to realize that for all our

grasping we almost missed the newborn

tree just over here that so recently started to sprout.

Such a vulnerable thing yet so certain of its need

to dig its roots down deep,

as far as they’ll go,

into mud.

 

Sitting beside it, our bodies exhale all our strife

into pools and puddles all around us and

We’re reminded that dirt aided by

the gracious sun and the waters of our difficulty

are the only things that ever built an oak.