Rooted by Charissa Sylvia

Some April showers
bring only roots
not flowers.
Growing invisibly,
nothing for the world to see,
nothing to prove their foundational necessity.
Delving down in darkness deep,
crawling over rocks and under trees,
growing slow, growing low, growing below
anywhere the eye can see,
they feel no need to prove their dignity
or make superfluous apology
for growing at their own speed.

The roots know they matter most.
It’s we who question our need
for roots that speak
of knowing the Grower,
in silence not song,
of letting growth take long.
It’s us who want to rush the roots
the evolving map of our own history,
the tangible tangles and twists
telling us where we’re from,
what we’ve overcome,
what, with time and tending and Truth,
we will become.

All gold that grows,
all loveliness that leans into the light,
all beauty in bloom,
has spent long hours
in the quiet, dark of perpetual night,
putting down roots
that won’t die,
tethering into place,
learning a new name.

Charissa Sylvia is a pastor's wife and homeschooling mama writing from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She writes on the ancient, mountain peaks surrounded by contemplative silence and profound mystery. Ok, just kidding. She writes in a small apartment looking at a busy road with rooms full of cats and kids and mysteriously spilled drinks as well as a hopeful eye towards the light and the firm belief that the ground right under her feet is holy.