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Roots


by Darryl Price


We're still falling. Sometimes it looks like we're 
not because the seasons change. There's nothing 
that I would say now that I didn't say 
to you then. It's a long way from a state 
of amazing grace when you refuse to 

even listen to the winds in your own 
heart's canyon. If you're frozen you're still a 
wondrous thing in some kind of vibrating 
motion. Look around you. The trees are an 
ancient prime example of this type of 

living river, with its lapping songs to 
the land. They are constantly stampeding 
forward, outstretched, with a tree shaped message 
in their growing branches, but the world won't 
exactly listen. If they stop to graze, 

it's only because they have young ones with 
them who need rest and nourishment and play. 
Same as all of us. And they might want to 
simply celebrate and remember something 
or someone important to the history 

of all trees everywhere, but soon 
enough their roots will get restless again 
to communicate with the universe 
in present movement and thought tenses. It's 
not flight, as much as it's like dancing, only 

it comes through in constant waves of wood 
and sap in our visionary world. But
it's still only us I'm talking about. 
So when did we settle for believing 
in nothing being national to heaven 

on earth? We are here, we are not gone.
It's all here or it doesn't exist. Things 
are trying to get your attention in 
ways that won't involve so much greed or death
to us all. This poem is part of that 

conversation. It's no more important 
than a leaf, a snail or a cloud, but its 
place is assured by a oneness that is
supplied by a certain bright knowing within 
all things everywhere. It may be a 

mystery, but it's not an imaginary 
number. It is, however, if 
you want to view it that way, a flowing 
fountain of renewed hope for the weary 
soul traveler. A navigator star.

An X marks the spot on a treasure map. 
But it can never take the place of you.
Nor should it. You are the essential piece
we need to complete this journey home. The
doorkeeper who has the care of your part. 

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