We lost 6 trees in a storm last week. The man that came to survey the damage said they were Black Cherry. Shallow roots make for a mess, he said. And standing there, under a blanket of grey clouds and crushed Mayapple, I could see the place where the wind took them. Where those same shallow roots came untethered, where a mourning dove stood shivering along the path, homeless.

When my youngest comes home from college, he laments the loss. Some undefined, yet permeable place in his memory stripped of his boyhood. Remember the museum I made? From the sticks and gravel, the sea glass stuffed inside pockets. An empty turtle’s shell devoid of life, its hiccups and slow prowl. Its grass stained knees. Do you remember?

I do remember. Coming home at his age. Noticing the shifts in furniture, the painted walls, the desk lamp leap to the living room. The hole left by not knowing who I might be outside the walls of what made me. Each opening in the window’s glass that saved me. This vellum place of the in-between, both sides still blurry.

The May Apple came early this year. Their secret blooms peeking out from under their canopy, dangling curiosity. Who are you when you hide? And I almost forgot what it was like to savor the small, the broken, the fragile lip of time rising into a smile. All daylight and cotton candy hope, her sticky persistence reminding me there’s no clock to watch, no hours mired in consequence. Just the strum of life in the distance, tossing gravel in her wake.

But here, we can still find the loomed turn of a leaf between day and night. Knowing there’s nothing more to love than to witness her watery eyes reminding us what we already see, what we already know, what has always been here. Just waiting for us to notice.

There is so much in the world trying to strip us from humanity. From touch and scent, the free fall of gladness into the perfect spot of grass. Dandelion blowing across the wind, neatly dressed in transparency. And the surprise, it’s all still here. Waiting for us to turn our heads from the blinding rage to find the soft bend of a forest spun from storm and seed, the polished gaze of the ordinary.

Look at you, Mayapple. Doing the thing you said you could never do. Showing up, pulling roots where the soil of your heart grew hard. Where you forgot it was you who holds the rake, who opens the earth with your own hands. The storm will come. The storm will go. This is what storms do. They open the sky, they shake the roots, they look for a place to fall.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve used words to bring me back home. To tie a string around my finger telling myself to never forget what wakes me when I fall asleep to the world around me. When I hide, when I pull the covers around the bruised fade of doubt, the raised scars of fear. I have learned that in these places of in-between, where the land is still swallowed by the fog, I can trust the light that guides me from within.

In honor of deepening the roots within me and supporting independent publishers, I am participating in Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Project. Thirty drafted poems in thirty days to support poetry and the people at Tupelo Press along with their Gentle House Writing Residency to gift writer’s the space to create and hone their craft. A fundraiser to support beautiful books and the people that make them possible. Follow my daily poems and make a donation to My 30/30 Tupelo Press Fundraiser. Thank you with all my heart. XO