Up By the Roots

 

Up By the Roots

(“Daniel…knelt down in prayer three times a day, giving thanks to God.” Daniel 6:10)

Would you pull me up by the roots
if I need replanting?
With every tick of the clock I
know
time is oozing by like a mudslide
tearing up the hillside.
Would you still sit beside me
in silence and solitary confinement?
Would you see what no one else sees
and still love me the same?
Would you believe (how can I deceive you)
that my love is deeper than ever before?
And yet I will not bow to the images;
I

Will

Not.

Nor to the graceless claws of
embattled rhetoric.

So, though I appear a fool,
though the days pass faster than
whitewater tumbling over the narrow
rock-strewn rapids,

I’ll grow if you plant me. And mis

Understood

By many, I’ll take my chances
that love still nourishes every prayer
I cannot say.