Rooted Things

Rooted Things There is a world of rooted things, lives that transpire up and down from the place where they first find themselves as a slight softening and then a forcing open of the seed where it fell, a thrust, a small will out of the dark into this staying in the world, this intention toward one form, clenched, devoted, waiting for its chance. In the lives of rooted things, there are no nuances. What is present is exactly what is meant: oak, dock, ironweed. Through leaf and root, through light and rain, through birds and wind, through ice, through phase of moon and equinox, through bees in the notch where two limbs cross like legs. No rushing down strange streets with life like a coat half-on half-off. No child burbling what she wants to be. These lives are grave. They unfold for a season or a century. They stay. They take what comes to them. They are all soul. —Mary Ann Taylor-Hall 108 ...