Member Poem

I cannot move a mountain
but I can sow a seed
and wait.

Soon, small green fingers
prise apart the molecues of soil,
extend themselves to find the sun
they need, grow up and out,
become in turn a shoot,
an awkward and untidy weed
and then a sapling, strong enough at last
to bear its weight and point
towards the sky. But how
can such a weak and slender reed
make any impact on the world?

Where strength is lacking
patience will succeed: as leaves
are breathing, rootlets drink
and feed, the stem grows harder,
thickening at glacial speed,
spreading its arms to catch the light.
The seedling has become a tree
ruling a swelling disc of land
while underground soft fingers
feel for hidden crevices
in hard but static rock.
Where they lead, thick roots
will follow, and in time that stone,
so old, so durable, will crack
and tumble down the mountainside.

First published in Link